What September Means to Me

September is my New Year’s.  In fact, it’s more significant than that first day of January ever really is.  I am far more synced into the school year than I am to the calendar year.  September:  end of summer/start of the school year and fall; the entryway to the months I treasure – October, November, and December; the harvest, the canning, and the storing; the holidays (my birthday among them) and attendant crafting; and last but certainly not least – fall fashion and all the September issues.

It’s been a quiet few weeks here, and at first I just thought it was the natural result of being away for so long.  Time to catch up, as it were, on things back at the homestead.  But I also knew that I wanted to revisit this blog and see what I wanted to do with it.  I never intended it to be a “What I did today” kind of blog, but more of a “How my life highlights these tensions and hey, do you feel them, too?” kind of blog.  I have to believe that there are people out there interested in navigating these tensions.  What’s it like to be a punk rocker who is now deep into fashion?  How do you reconcile the desire for self-sufficiency with a wonderfully fulfilling shoe addiction?  Proud to live downtown but tired of your crack-y neighbors?  Any problems being a social smoker and a runner?  Etcetera, etcetera.

So I’m focusing.  Having been away allowed me to see different ways to be myself.  I am constantly trying to integrate these parts of me, and trying to do it publicly forces me to decide what’s important and what is not.  Am I afraid to reveal things here?  Sure, but that fear allows me to think about why and then figure out what’s important to my sense of self.  I know I have friends out there who see some of my posts as evidence of insecurities that I generally don’t reveal in my day-to-day constructed self, and guess what – they are!  And more to the point - who cares?   I don’t need to always be on, intimidating (once a student said to me, “You’re intimidating, but in a nice way.”  Huh?), or self-assured.   I am who I am, and I’m thinking about how to be even more so in the coming year and how this blog will play a role in that.

Rock on with your bad self.