The coming of autumn is not like the giddy arrival of summer, which everyone welcomes with open arms and a head full of holiday plans. The swirling leaves of autumn come at a more thoughtful, measured time of year and always seem to herald momentous times ahead. In previous years, these feelings were often just the preliminary signs of a nasty cold, but this year, the winds really do seem to be blowing things onwards and askew. Personally, I was very happy with this week's autumnal weather because, after 18 months, I've decided to stop writing Winging It, and I was impressed that the seasons were so in tune with my own feelings of change.
First of all, there's the change in The Irish Times itself - next Saturday sees the birth of a bouncing baby magazine and the transformation of the Weekend section into something even more lovely and cultured than it is now. I could still have written in this new Weekend section, but I have chosen to stop writing the column altogether. In many ways, it's an odd decision, because writing your own column is one of the biggest privileges afforded a journalist. When you get to write about whatever you want, it becomes an even more decadent treat, like being not just allowed, but positively encouraged, to eat just the marshmallow bits in a pack of Mikados.
However, after years of being the last one at the party, still putting on Abba tracks when everyone else had gone home, I am gradually learning the art of quitting while I'm ahead. Any newspaper column has a natural lifespan, beyond which the writer becomes like a pub bore, endlessly banging on about their little gripes and theories, until people who used to think you were a gas ticket altogether begin to ignore you and wonder what was the point of you in the first place. Of course some people only reach this point after 18 years rather than 18 months, but I'm not going to take that risk. I'm hoping that, by signing off now, people might even get a little sentimental about the column and remember it as far more prescient, poignant and witty than it really was.
It has been a fascinating thing to write, not because my own life is particularly enthralling, but because the process of sharing certain parts of my life with the general public has been a very interesting exercise. The only justification for writing about personal thoughts, feelings, disappointments, discoveries and theories in a national newspaper is that a reader will connect with them - and time and again, public reaction to particular columns proved there must be some virtue beyond mere self-indulgence to writing about the personal.
Weeks where I was most ruthlessly honest about myself, as when I wrote about loneliness, depression, moving house, rudeness and, interestingly, my irritation with badly behaved children, got the largest postbags. The reactions were always of the "Well, God Almighty, I know exactly what you mean and I thought I was the only one . . . " variety.
Indeed, the weekly postbag - particularly the electronic one - was always a joy because oddly enough, writing such a column can be strangely isolating. I would send it out into the world and then wonder whether it made sense or made me sound like an awful eejit. Confirmation, whether it came from Offaly or Alaska, (the astonishingly broad reach of ireland.com never ceases to amaze me) was always welcome.
Even the negative letters were good, because they were usually very funny. I particularly liked the one addressed to "Louise East Go West and Stay There" and the two-line e-mail that said "Just to let you know this is the only good thing you have ever written". Thank you for staying with me long enough to make a judgment, Mr Flynn, and apologies to all the people who wrote nice letters and to whom I didn't get round to replying for reasons of time.
There were bad bits about writing it too. Sometimes it would feel remarkably exhibitionist to be writing about my private life, and here I have to thank friends and family who were very patient about seeing bits of their own lives trotted out for general edification. I usually asked permission before I wrote up a piece of someone's life - and really, truly, I did keep a lot to myself too, but inevitably I sometimes overstepped the mark. The feeling of having inadvertently upset someone was, thankfully, very infrequent, but when it did happen it was nearly enough to make me give up the whole thing.
Slightly more common was a nasty feeling of exposure. When you have your picture in the paper, and particularly if you put elements of your own life out for inspection, you can expect the lines between the public and the private to get slightly blurred. Luckily, Winging It is not that high-profile, and the most common response was a look of slight confusion as people tried to work out whether they were in school with me or whether I made the sandwiches in the local shop.
Others made kind remarks, but I was always aware that, when you go into print, you put your head above the parapet and people are entitled to their opinion of what you do, good or bad. Particularly when I was feeling hungover, I used to get The Fear. You know, the one where you think strangers don't like you? It's much worse when it could quite possibly be true.
But these were minor points compared with the pleasure of having all that lovely space to write about those things which annoyed me or interested me.
At times it was hard to come up with topics week after week - and just for the record, I'd like to point out that I stuck to my personal resolution never to moan about the taxi situation - but the satisfaction of giving a grievance a good airing was a fine feeling.
Sporadic feelings of deja vu were a problem though. I would be delighted with myself for the ease with which I wrote on a certain topic only suddenly to wonder whether I had written about it before. In truth, this is another, more thought-provoking reason for finishing the column sooner rather than later.
The title, Winging It, came about when I was describing to a colleague yet another weekend in which I was plunged into a situation for which I felt unprepared but which I somehow managed to muddle through. The phase of life in the late teens and early 20s is such an odd time, when you are suddenly required to be an adult without anyone giving you the handbook.
My generation was the first to come of age in a country with a bit of disposable income, where working hours are long but well-rewarded, and emigration is a question of aspiration not desperation. Of course it's exciting, and preferable to hanging around on the dole, but it has its own set of frustrations, priorities and problems. It seemed that it might be an interesting thing to write about. I'm not that much older now, and truth be told, writing the column has taught me that a lot of those feelings are experienced by everyone, and not just twenty-somethings in boomtime Ireland. Still, I'm increasingly aware that it's not just the paper or the season that is changing, but me as well.
I would hate to get stuck in a role of being a professional young person, patronising the next generation with assumptions about their own experiences. As I wrote some weeks ago, times do change when you're in your 20s, and change quite dramatically at that: I no longer live in a flat, no longer have a flat-mate, no longer have my first wage packet and no longer have quite the same feeling of discovery about the adult world.
It seems to me now that perhaps I stopped winging it some time ago, and I don't think I'm quite ready for that. So I've just booked a round-the-world ticket for the New Year.
This is Louise East, winging it, over and out.