Tonight I am grateful for seasons.  I prefer those of the predictable variety, but I’m grateful for any seasons, really.  I’m speaking of seasons both literal and figurative.

Now, I live in Southern California, and our seasons are bit different.  Rather unpredictable, really, in terms of which months they occur in.  I mean, we have a heat season (that one’s gotten longer—sorry, climate change deniers); a June gloom season (that recently has played into May and July); a fire season (see heat season); a flood season that predictably follows fire season…if we get any rain; we have drought season (see heat season); and we swear (though Cal Tech refutes it) that we have earthquake seasons, too.

I actually miss “real” seasons—the usual spring (thaw, rains, flowers), summer (heat), fall (leaf color changes and crisp, clear air), and winter (dare I suggest a little snow?).  I don’t want über extremes—I never really understood why people voluntarily lived in Minnesota, for instance.  But I’d like a little more “normal.”

Eighty-degree Christmases get old after a while.

I’ve gotten so I quit trying to predict anything—either about weather or about life.  As I write this, a week after blessed rainfall and temps in the 60s, we are facing a weekend in which the mercury is predicted to rise to the upper 90s…which really means triple digits round these parts.

My figurative seasons are, mercifully, a little more reliable.  I wouldn’t call them science or anything, but I can generally trust that during spring, with the greening of things, and during fall, with the cooling and crisping, I will get revved and writerly and productive.

And I am grateful for that.  I just get in the mood.

I know a writer is not supposed to wait for inspiration, that the inspiration comes amid the work that is already in progress, comes to visit itself upon the writer who is already pressing keyboard buttons.

I know this, and I believe this.

And that is not to say that I don’t write during other times of year, too.  But it is nice to have seasonal swings that make it easier to sit down and start pressing the buttons.

I am grateful to note that I have seasons, both on the micro and macro levels.  I have these writing seasons that come round about the same time every year.  And I’m entering new seasons of life as changes—in work, in personal relationships, in self-knowledge, in life—manifest themselves.  And this, too, is fairly normal.  And for this, too, I am thankful.