We Don't Need to "Make The Most of Summer"
What if we stopped optimizing our time off because we didn't need to?
I am writing today’s post as much for me as for you.
All this year, I’ve been focused on one particular day: July 1st. The day my book is due. I’ve spent months feeling sad that the deadline would mean I’d be locked in my office during all of May and June — arguably the most beautiful months of the year where I live — but I vowed I’d make up for it in July and August. I would have the most epic late summer imaginable. I would do nothing but read fiction and eat tacos.
At first, this plan — or was it a fantasy? — was fun. It was full of hope and excitement. But as I edged closer to my deadline, the plan became tinged with angst. What if the rest of my summer wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped? What if I actually felt sad, rather than happy, turning my book in? What if I felt bored, rather than elated, having less to do? What if I actually needed to work to pay the bills?
What if I didn’t make the most of my July and August after all?
One of the problems with our culture is that we work so hard for so long, stuffing our wants and needs under our desk chairs and minivans, and then we hope and expect the world of our time off — which, yes, sometimes is totally amazing. But not always. Sometimes, our time off doesn’t make up for everything we’ve sacrificed leading up to it. Sometimes it doesn’t deliver in the way we desperately needed it to. And then we find ourselves back in the daily grind, feeling frustrated and unfulfilled…. and pin our hopes on the next time we can escape the lives we lead. I’m in the middle of Miranda July’s fantastic book All Fours, and she describes it as “a system of grit, grit grit … then release.”
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