Newsletter #119: I Loathe Pumpkins in August

“Seriously?” I said to myself, to my wife, to the ether. I stopped our neighborhood stroll, needing reconciliation.

“What?” Keti asked, tone dripping with insinuation. What’s this about to be? We need to cook dinner.

“Look,” I pointed at a neighbor’s porch. Barely visible, through the leaves of a verdant maple, was a pumpkin. A bewildering impossibility. Something misplaced. A relic of season’s past, surely.

“Oh my,” she said. We walked home in silence. This was Tuesday night.

Tuesday morning, I’d begun a new writing project. Didn’t go well. Doubt was alive. Tuesday afternoon, I’d begun two new furniture projects. Didn’t go well. Doubt was an adult now, backing me down into a corner. But Keti got home from work, and all would be fine soon, I thought. Take a walk, reconnect, get ahold of the bigger picture.

Then, I saw that medium-sized, $18-at-Whole-Foods pumpkin and unraveled. I wasn’t ready. For fall. For new projects. For anything. I went to the neighbor’s porch, picked up the pumpkin, found the nearest mailbox, and… just kidding. I went home and whipped us up average—for my standards—tofu sandwiches. Then, I opened my laptop and got to work. The next morning, I executed next steps for the new pieces. Doubt was dead. Why?

“Make a commitment. That’s the most important thing I’ve learned in life,” said big wave surfer Joey Cabell, 87, in ​an interview for The Surfer’s Journal​ last year. “You can pass through and try something for a few weeks. That’s fine. But if you really want to succeed at something, you gotta commit.”

Twenty-four hours later, Keti and I walked and talked of autumn, its seriousness, its demands. Looking down our street, I took in the towering oaks that partitioned both sides as the last rays of sunlight glanced their tops. I squinted. They were turning crimson. And I didn’t blink.

To livin’ a life we love,

Ryan Fightmaster, MD