Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn

I seem to have lost myself over the summer. Words slipped through my fingers like sand and they were gone before I could capture them. I blame the heat. But maybe there is more to it than that. Maybe I’ve become jaded with this whole blogging thing. Maybe I have nothing left to say. I am fearful of making connections and losing them; of the transient nature of it all. I compare myself to this one or to that other and wonder whether the bar has been raised too high making me afraid that I will never reach it. My self-confidence is low. I confess that I have struggled with that all my life. Which is perhaps why I have never shared my blog with any of my close friends. I tend to find it easier to step out into the unknown and share my thoughts and words with people that I have never met. Strangely enough, I feel safer. Safe in the knowledge that I am not laying myself too bare to those that know me best. Which is, perhaps, another reason why I am not fond of summer. Bear with me, I will eventually get to the point.

I have called myself a bundle of contradictions on many occasions. And I will do so again today. I am a very private person. I do not naturally share my strengths, sorrows, successes or failures with the world. And yet, I have a blog. Now if that isn’t a contradiction, I don’t know what is. But there are millions of blogs out there, and since mine has never drawn thousands of followers, it is safe to say that I am more or less anonymous except to the few who stop by and read. Which is why summers are a bit of an ordeal for me.

Living through a Mediterranean summer is like constantly being on a stage. Everybody is out and about, windows and doors are thrown wide open, peace and serenity take a vacation and there is a cacophony in my head that just doesn’t let me think. So I become moody. I day-dream and my productivity falls to zero. Like a snail I tend to hide away in summer and wait for the first rain and cool breezes to nudge me out of my stupor. So with that confession done and dusted, it is time to make amends as I bid summer farewell and look to autumn for  new adventures.

So what shall I do now that the days are relatively cooler and I have recovered my sanity? Well, I definitely plan on reading more books. The last book I read was while we were on vacation in the US. I think that joining a library would be a good option. Another resolution on my list is to write/ journal/ blog more often. Once I settle into a schedule, that should be a no-brainer. With that comes the overwhelming desire to take better photos. I am working hard on that one but it’s not easy to find interesting subjects indoors. So that brings me to the next ‘resolution’, which is hiking. We have a very bad habit of sticking to our own neck of the woods, even though no place on this island is more than an hour away (and that’s stretching it quite a bit). We have also developed a very sedentary lifestyle which is good for nobody. So we plan on putting our hiking boots back on (they haven’t had a work out in years) and exploring other areas. Hopefully these hikes and walks will give me the subject matter on which I can practise my photography - call it killing two birds with one stone. And since hiking is more fun with a treat or two in the back-pack, I think it’s time to put to good use the hundreds of recipes I have pinned on Pinterest by baking more goodies.

It sounds like a plan to me. I will do my best to act on it but it’s all looking good and, hopefully, this autumn I will catch all those errant words that have slipped through my grasp and write a tale or two to share with you.

Beneath the cliffs at Wied iz-Zurrieq, August 2015