I realized this week that I had been bitten by the cooking bug. Suddenly it seemed necessary to cook things. I was making lists of things to shop for, lists of things that should be cooked this weekend. I had to cook apple pie, famous cottage potatoes, dried apples, peach pie, pizza, meatloaf, potatoes, couscous salad, and cole slaw … this is a visceral part of fall planning: planning not to run out of food over the winter. But there’s more Fall Planning for 2024 than just food.
What does this have to do with fall? Fall of course is the time of storage, of harvest, of laying things up for the winter. Perhaps my cooking impulse was just a natural life thing, and yet I can’t remember it ever hitting this hard.
The Trees Have Gone Gold
The trees have gone yellow now; it’s gotten to those days when you wear a coat when you leave in the morning and come home and forget it. Indian summer perhaps. At school, the kids love to go to recess.
This weekend I’m preparing to go to the Spring Creek Gardens event for Halloween. We go every year with the grandchildren. Our hiking club proposes to have a picnic on Sunday in which we will have a potluck and carve pumpkins. And Bob and I are planning to hit Creepy Walk tonight.
So I’m fully experiencing fall. It occurs to me that this may be new. In the past, in my shell-shocked life of waiting for the other shoe to drop, I don’t think I experienced it vividly like this.
Fall is the Time for Planning
I said a couple weeks ago I would do Fall Planning for 2024. and I’ve started to think about doing that. It seems to me I should make a goal of having the 2024 plans broadly sketched by Halloween.
What are the plans? These are some areas:
- Christmas Holidays
- Trips I might take
- Spring Break
- Birthdays on the calendar
- Annual Budget
- Grad School Goals
- Professional/Teacher Goals
- Health Goals
- Next Year’s Garden
- Blogging
Ah, yes blogging. Blogging comes up a lot. Perhaps I need to make a better plan for blogging. I have loved this blog for so long because it allows me to express myself. And that really is the purpose of Susan Taylor Brand.
I remember when I was teaching second grade we taught the students the four purposes of writing. There was information, entertainment, persuasion, and expressing your feelings.
Back then 10 years ago that I couldn’t imagine what writing to express your feelings look like. This is just one more example of me being out of contact with myself. I wrote to express myself everyday in my journal. And now I’ve written Susan Taylor Brand to express myself.
But is that enough? I find myself wondering if I need to think about other writing projects. An annual plan would be a good time to think about that.
Work Has Been Wonky
Work has been wonky and grad school has been challenging in its own strange way. We’re all getting A’s but emotionally I find myself struggling to feel I fit in.
And yet hasn’t that always been my story? In the New Year perhaps I should think about how I will fit in. How I will find a place that feels truly comfortable. And how I will make myself thrive. As I said on Twitter a few weeks back, the goal is to go from survival to thrival.
Survival to Thrival
I added “How I will Fit In” to my list.
- (How I will fit in)(Or how I will conquer the feeling that I don’t)
This last month, as the leaves turned golden, I’ve wondered if I fit in at all. And I’ve realized that this is ridiculous. I have a home, family, friends, job, and belong to several associations. Why do I still worry about fitting in? I will reflect on this. And I will lay in the Fall Planning for 2024: Survival to Thrival. That’s the ticket.