It seems sacrilegious to even say so, but it’s true.

We have all reached that special moment in time when all the sun, the fun, the play and the games come home to roost. The ice cream: peppermint stick and rocky road and bubblegum and vanilla with hot fudge sauce has is just too much, a sticky icky mess of overindulgence devoid of joy. The children: blissfully sun-kissed and sand-coated cherubim now transformed howling animals, running wild with feral scowls on their little faces and poky sticks aimed at eyes with malice. It’s summer. It’s been so much fun, too much fun. And now it has to end.

There was a Staples ad that used to run was I child.   It gets better with every year. A pasty father performs an awkward ballet of joy to the classic “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”, gliding down the aisles of a cavernous Staples store, filling a shopping cart with school supplies. Two glum children trail behind, a boy and girl, so clearly despondent at both their lot in life and their father’s boundless joy.

The older I get, the more I can relate. And the funnier that TV spot becomes. I am now closer in age to that soft and pasty dad than I care to admit, but I openly relish the return of structure to our collective family life. We need it. In fact we crave it. With guideposts and parameters, we can flourish. Remove all the rules and the structure and it seems that we don’t know what to do with ourselves. There must be something to that whole Manichean balance of opposites I have been hearing about most of my life.

It is time for school, time for buckling down, time for the Harvest.

So now the Fall is here. And I believe we are ALL relieved.   It is time for school, time buckling down, time for the Harvest. There is work to be done and I tend to agree with the likes of Nevil Shute and countless other great minds that there is satisfaction to be had in work. That idle hands may indeed be the devil’s playthings. Having spent so much of my working life in the Entertainment business, I more firmly believe in the value of utility.   And to paraphrase Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we derive our happiness from our sense of utility.

So let’s get to it. Next summer will be here soon enough.