I’m so glad autumn is here. I’ve been needing autumn to swing on through, even though I hardly realized it until now.
Most people think of spring as the time for restarts, the time for spring cleaning, and a refresh and a blank slate. But for me, because I now sadly have to admit that skydiving has the largest guiding hand in my life, spring is firmly into “the season”. If I can have my way, I’ll be tidying up a team roster somewhere in January, maybe February. By March, we’ve put in some tunnel hours and we’ve got a game plan. By real spring, we are not just starting. Hopefully, we’re already picking up steam to be able to hit the summer running at full stride, looking towards Nationals. Spring is much too late to be starting, if I had my way.
However, Autumn. Autumn is where it all starts.
Some years, it starts a few weeks after Nationals. After you’ve returned home, caught up on laundry, washed your jumpsuit, decided when you’re going to get your rig washed and repacked. You’ve dumped all the detritus from the bottom of your gear back into the middle of your floor and sorted it. You had mercy on those couple buffs that were slowly shredding another centimeter in freefall each jump. You even considered replacing your altimeter batteries but didn’t. (They’re still sitting in your Amazon cart.) Then it’s time to start plotting. Time to start putting out feelers. Calling friends. Messaging coaches or mentors. Pondering which slot you want to fly next. Or other years, as soon as they hang the medal around someone’s neck and people have cracked beers, it starts. Gossip flys around about who is leaving what team, who else is building a team. Who’s got a slot available? Who is never going to fly with those teammates again and wants a different team? Sometimes, the dance of trying to recruit a team happens before you’ve even caught a flight home.
Autumn is when I start planning. If not for a team, at least for what priorities I will have next year. I love skydiving so much & I love it all. I want to do it all. I simply don’t have time, so I have to choose. In the fall, the days get shorter and I have less outdoor stuff to do. I start mulling over next season.
But like I said before, I’ve been needing autumn to swing through and I didn’t even realize it. I’ve been needing a fresh start. A plotting session. Something to scheme about to keep myself incredibly busy with skydiving.
Because last year, I didn’t even really have one. Last summer, after the Project 19, I was so tired that I didn’t do anything. I did nothing. This skydiving season has been the quietest skydiving season I have had in a very long time. It was all things- good, and restful, and boring, and foreign, and anxiety-inducing because I wasn’t doing enough, because I didn’t have a plan. On my run tonight, I thought hard about it and I believe I came up with 4 events: Matt Fry experimental bigway, Fly 4 Life, Wisconsin HU record, Summerfest. I will be attending the Women’s CA HU record this weekend too. That’s it. I was doing some tunnel, but that faded out after they didn’t have the staff at SF to really stay open for fun jumpers. No Nationals. No team training. No real skills camps. Very little travel. I think I was just so tired after the zillion head down camps I attended all across the country. So I didn’t really plan anything. When people ask me what I’ve been up to, I kinda start blankly and mumble “Uhh..”. Nothing. I’ve been doing zero this year.
But now I’m ready for planning again. And I’m doing some scheming. And I have some ideas.
More importantly, I can feel a lot of energy building up in me. I can feel the excitement of chasing a new thing growing in me. I have this huge big list of things I want to do to start preparing, but instead of feeling overwhelmed, I feel excited about starting. I haven’t felt like this since 2019. It’s really fun to feel super, super excited about skydiving again. I’m getting back to running. Going to get back into the abs habit I started this spring for a bit. I’m going to start studying. (Yes, I study skydiving. It makes me really good. I actually have to try hard to get good at skydiving; I am not really a natural.) I am even thinking of putting off drinking for a while. I’m just happy to have an idea of where I might be headed.
And if it falls through? Well, that would be a bummer. But I have backup plans 🙂 There’s always other fun to chase in skydiving.