I’m always amazed how the turn of the seasons also seems to flip our frame of mind. As summer turns to fall, we shift mental gears. It’s a time for hunkering down, organizing our to do lists and picking up tasks set aside sometime back in April or May. I know that’s certainly true for me.

This summer was a great summer. I did a ton of biking (which seems to be the new mid-life pursuit in the online ad biz – everyone I talk to now is a road biker) including a memorable trip down the Oregon Coast and 2 Metric Century Rides. I also discovered, much to my shock, that I actually love landscaping. That has to be some manifestation of a mid life crisis, because I sure the hell didn’t feel that way in my 20’s.

This summer also saw me working on my first book – The BuyerSphere Project, which is due out on Amazon in a few weeks. I’ve been threatening to write a book now for a few years and now, I’ll actually have something in the book shelf to point to, proving it just wasn’t an idle boast. The book that came out isn’t the one that I set out to write, but I discovered that the author has remarkably little control over what comes out on paper. We go in with the best of intentions, but somewhere in the process, the book seems to take on a mind of it’s own. In this case, I started planning for a book about the psychology of consumerism and ended up writing a book on organizational buying behaviors. Related, yes. But it’s not the book I anticipated. However, I must say, I enjoyed almost all of the process. I’m also taking a crack at self publishing. I’ll let you know how that goes.

So the summer was productive, but it almost seemed that all the things I did belong in a special “summer” category. They seem separate from the day-to-day detail of my life. And now, as the weather cools, I’m settling back into the regular groove. I do so reluctantly, because everything seems more alive somehow in the summer. It’s like the transition from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. For those 5 glorious months from May to the end of September, I visit the technicolor of Oz, but now, I’m back in the black and white of Kansas.

So, on this gloomy Monday in rainy BC, Canada, I’ll trudge my way through my list of tasks, more productive perhaps, but secretly dreaming of next year, when I can build another retaining wall!