Not much to say here except that I always have liked this photo and yet I think it kind of underwhelms when I step back from it. I periodically try cropping it to see if the contrast between the drab, dry brown of the foreground and the brilliant autumn colors on display in the woods beyond the barn leaps out a bit more and I don’t think there’s a crop that crosses the finish line.
But getting ready to teach again does make me think always of fall weather in Eastern North America, and how much that feels like the real “new year” to me. My energy runs on that cycle (and so do the resolutions I make and break), rather than the calendar year. So I am in that mindset now: full of energy, feeling ready to do a great deal, focused on both teaching and scholarship. I am wondering if this year I might find a way to maintain that energy longer by staying further away from governance and administration except where I’m already committed to do so. I doubt it, in the sense that I still do care what happens and still worry—I am not really made, not yet, for “quiet quitting”, much as I appreciate and support people who are or might soon be in that frame of mind.
For the first time in a long time, this is not the beginning of my year. But happy semester!