Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

I’ve been struggling with what to write about the past several days because not much is happening in my life. I’m a single, 45-year-old man who lives a fairly leisurely existence. I work, I take walks, I fish, I workout, I cook, and I generally enjoy my life, but it doesn’t make for great material. 

As every writer knows, it’s conflict that makes for great material, and I don’t have enough of it. I’d love to be able to lead with something like, “I caught my wife in bed with the Dish Network guy and she tried to pawn it off as necessary to achieve a monthly discount, but she said the same thing about the gas man and I have yet to see any savings,” or, “My kid got caught selling pot at school and I can’t find my pot!” 

These are the kinds of things that keep people’s eyes glued to the pages. Alternatively, I could write one of those dad blogs about how my kids are growing up so fast, and oh the things they get into, while talking about my new Traeger grill and my endless smoked meat successes. 

But all that really happened today is that I took a walk and noticed the first leaves starting to give up their green and change color. It’s the maple tree leaves, every last one of them traitors to spring, that are always the first to turn. Their beauty is a cruel trick, harbinger of the most bittersweet of seasons, ushering in autumn with its cool nights and crisp mornings. 

Autumn, that reminder that all good things must come to an end, because we all know winter will soon muscle past like an 18-wheeler, kicking up snow and sending us into the ditch of the indoors, buried under blankets and clutching the remote from the comfort of an overused couch as the wind howls and the gas bill continues to rise despite the wife’s best efforts. 

Here is the truth of this blog post: I set goals for myself. And one of those goals is to do at least 8 blog posts per month, and today, Aug. 31, at nearly 10 p.m., I stand at just 6. I could dig within myself and examine why this feels like failure to me: Me, who does this blog voluntarily, who sets goals of 8 arbitrarily, and me, who then feels guilty when not meeting said arbitrary goals for voluntary blog. But I’ve learned not to dig too deeply within oneself for fear of the consequences of what you may find. Push forward instead and live what life you have left to the best of your ability.

And so this post makes for 7, and it will have to do for now. Still, winter is nothing if not a giver of time, that season when friends become scarce and the pace of life slows just a little so that we find ourselves with minutes here and there and unexpected time to kill, time to write, so that the 8th missed blog post of August 2023 can come along later as post number 9 during one of those late winter months that seem never to end, and the balance of the universe within is restored.