I’m drinking chicken broth and it’s absolutely delicious. It’s delicious because of all the other seasonings that I added to it because otherwise it has no flavor, but maaaaaan, is it hitting the spot right now. The time I spent driving today was with the window down, or the AC was going while the heated seat was full blast. Hot, cold, all of it at the same time because I wasn’t sure what my temperature was. My heartbeat was coming through my teeth. The eyes are itchy, the nose is running, and the sneezes are violent. Everything feels achy but this body is always achy in one way or another, so it’s hard to judge if this is new. The urge to sleep is ginormous, magnificent, even cumbersome. In fact, it feels like that’s the only thing worth doing right now. But how could a man say “no” to dinner? Take away his man-card if that happens. Automatic revocation. Yoink.

This is one of my allergy seasons. It’s every fall and every spring when the changes of the environment around us rock me in one way or another. It’s a small price to pay for adjusting to the incoming colder weather. Or is it the leaving of the warmer weather? Is winter coming or is summer leaving? What perspective do we take on this one? It has to be a “both” thing, right? If we only see summer leaving, then we’re only focused on the warmer, longer days leaving us. If we only see the coming of winter, we only see the longer, colder evenings with shorter days. We have to see both.

The warm and the cold. The long and the short. The yin and the yang. We have to see both sides to the coin. I can’t just blow one nostril, I have to blow both. To eat is to shit. To drink is to pee. To have an end you have to have a beginning. To sleep is to wake. To live is to die. To have seasons you need the cycle of warm and cold.

I’m sure there’s many, MANY more examples, but I’m sure you get the point. Instead of being focused on just one season coming or going, focus on the cycle, the bigger picture. To have the beauty that we have in the nature around us, we must have the entire cycle. The animals need to hibernate, we need to the snow to ice nature’s bumps and bruises, the plants need their winter naps as well. Just as excited as we are to see the foliage come and go, we get equally as excited to see the first few leaves sprouting in the spring. Just as much as I don’t enjoy being stuffed up, achy, and feeling generally shitty for a few days, I really do find a lot of solace in the midst of winter taking a deep, hearty breath and feeling the cold airs fill my lungs… and then enjoy watching the exhale resemble the breath of a relaxed dragon. I would assume that a relaxed dragon would have to exhale some sort of belly smoke and wouldn’t necessarily spew fire each breath. There wasn’t much research done on the mythical dragon…so I’m not entirely sure when it would breathe smoke or fire. It has to be a choice, right? Like, the dragon doesn’t always breathe out fire. There has to be a time when it just lets some air out. It always looked like fire was dragon vomit. Maybe dragons were just really sick so while seeking help from humans, they would accidentally ralph their fire-vomit over towns. Looks like we had these dragon-fellas all misunderstood. Our ancestors should have been better.

The cycle that I’m going to go through over the next few days is one that I’m all too familiar with. The feeling of being rundown is going to stay prevalent and it’s going to be battled out of the body with excessive caffeine. Then, because of the dehydration, the eyes are going to be even more itchy. With the combination of the lack of sunlight and itchy eyeballs, the desire to sleep will kick in sooner once the caffeine wears off…then I’ll be craving bed by 8pm every evening. WHICH, isn’t necessarily a negative, but it’ll make writing just a wee bit tougher. If I was a betting man, I would bet that the moment I’m done eating dinner and watching a little television, I’m going to fall asleep on the couch. It’s almost inevitable. It would be cool if it wasn’t, but sometimes we can’t outrun our fate.

These symptoms and their counterparts will pass soon. It’s OK. It’ll be a couple days and then we’ll all be nestled into “cold weather mode.” The 80 degree days in November have made it a little difficult to adapt, but with 30 degree evenings, we’re getting an understanding of where we’re at in nature’s cycle. Having just changed the clocks back an hour, we’re still all adjusting our internal clocks. What’s really taking me back is that we’re never going to turn our clocks back again.

Have you thought about that yet?

We’re NEVER going to change our clocks again. You see what time it is while you’re reading this right now? Guess what – that’s always going to be the case. No, you’re not trapped in time, relax. The cycle of time will never change again. Well, man’s attempt to manipulate it will never be a thing again, unless we figure out time travel.

Time travel would be cool, in theory, but it would probably cause more problems than it’s worth. No one would have any appreciation or respect for time anymore. People would procrastinate more, ignore the moments they’re living more than they already are, they’d just straight up abuse time. So hopefully man never figures out how to travel through time. Just like most things we do collectively, we’d probably make a big goddamned mess out of it and kill more innocent and sickly dragons.