Seasons
Corrections, collapses, blossoms, blizzards…
When you ask a transplant what they don’t like about living in California, depending on their place of origin, it’s usually the same answer: the lack of seasons. It’s sort of an ongoing joke, because it highlights just how relatively few things Californians have to complain about.¹ But it’s also true.²
Having come from Ohio myself, I do miss the four weather transition periods a year. It’s not so much about the weather itself as it is about a discernable difference in the air. Everything feels different because it feels different. It’s a natural time of transition.
“Finally, spring is here, the cold winter is over.” “At last, the hot summer is over, and fall is here.” “Ah, the first snowfall.” That kind of thing. It’s a marker in time. It reminds us that the years are passing and life is changing. And it can be a reset. Or just a reason to bundle up by a fire. Or to go outside in the sun. It is harder to feel all of that in California.
I found myself thinking about seasons this morning when looking at our current macro economic picture. It’s bleak, to say the least. The most bleak it has been in a while. Certainly since 2007/2008 when the housing bubble burst and the banks collapsed. And maybe even since 1999/2000, when the first tech bubble burst.³ And maybe this is even worse than any of those. After all, there is no bubble bursting here, except perhaps the notion of our own immortality. We’ll see.
Anyway, I do think and hope there will be a silver-lining to the current mayhem. Assuming we can get the COVID-19 situation under control, the markets will come back. Just like they always do. The hardest part of the economic side of this may be that it has been such a long ‘bull’ run — the longest — that many people have forgotten what a ‘bear’ market is like.
It’s sort of like how if you live in an environment of perpetual spring, and then head to a frigid area, it’s a system shock. But if you live in a world of seasons, you get used to it. And again, you actually welcome the change at times.
And while no one would exactly welcome a stock market crash, history has shown it to be the most fertile ground for renewed opportunity and growth, certainly on the startup side of the equation. And I think most people you talk to on my side of that equation would admit that things have been running a bit too hot for a bit too long. A reset can be a good thing.⁴ It’s just extremely unfortunate that this virus, which is taking its toll in human lives, is what has triggered it. But something was always going to trigger it.
For the reasons stated above, it’s extremely hard to be rational at a time like this — we’re perhaps just entering the really bad period — let alone hopeful. And certainly nothing about this feels natural. And yet, time flows, the weather shifts, and seasons change.
¹ Of course, there’s increasingly a lot of other things to complain about. The cost of living. The housing crisis. The homeless situation. The fires. Etc.
² Yes, California does actually have seasons — though they’re sort of odd: San Francisco’s “summer” is often very cold and “fall” is increasingly very warm. But in general, at least in our pre-Global Warming world, temperatures generally stay in the 50–80 degree range in SF. And so while “fall” may feel a little like fall, with leaves changing a bit, it’s not like “fall” back east.
³ And then, of course 18 months later when terrorist flew two planes into the heart of Wall Street.
⁴ I won’t use the forest purging analogy I might otherwise, because that’s still too much of a terrifying reality here in California. The land without season.
