Fall is here, ready or not. I love the Puget Sound, but I always feel a little shudder go through my body this time of year, thinking of the long dark winter ahead.
Nancy J and I spent a week in Austin Texas at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. If you love live music, I recommend the event. We saw Wilco, Coldplay, Dave Alvin, Spoon, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Death Cab for Cutie, the John Spencer Trio and others. The event is coordinated almost entirely by volunteers, and I was amazed at how well it was laid out logistically, never a line for food, water, bathroom, transportation. The one thing the organizers had not planned for very well was 108 degree weather and no rain for weeks preceeding the event. The dust storm kicked up by 65,000 happy listeners on the last day saw people grabbing whatever they could fix for a bandana and wrapping it around their noses and mouths to keep the dust from clogging their lungs.
I came back from Austin in a bit of a funk and I am not immediately sure why. Partly it is that I really don't love my job anymore, but there seems to be more. I think it is the realization that I'm not anchored in Seattle as firmly as I have been and that I have the opportunity to be around family in a city that I might like even more than this one. For now I'm just breathing and taking small steps, testing the waters of change and uncertainty and adventure once again to see if I am brave enough or crazy enough to wade in again.
