This Primary song from my childhood sets the stage for my summer. The lazy days and loose schedule are so appealing. The cool breeze across the deck as I lounge with a book that I don't have to read... The leisurely stroll from home to library to sno-cone shack... Wearing jeans over to the office to fiddle with stacks of old student papers and to browse through books I last touched in grad school... The delights of afternoons unencumbered by meetings... The freedom to splash in the pool with kids and give them chores when they say the "B" word.
All these are the delights of summer.
And yet...
Last summer I took the relaxing a little too seriously, I think. I binge watched shows I'd been missing through the school year. I stayed in bed until embarrassingly late hours. I didn't shower some days, and I pretended to shower other days (wash your hair, put on more deodorant). The projects I'd promised myself would get done didn't. The books I said I'd read sat idle on the nightstand or the desk. The exercise I set out to do was roundly, soundly, firmly ignored.
And so, another summer comes and I resolve "this" and "that." I set goals and make plans. Though I'm not foolish enough to post them here, I have made a list of things I will do and ways I will spend my precious summer. It's posted in two places... in my brain (that is to say, in my phone, as a Wunderlist) and as a printout on the mirror in the bathroom I built two (or was it three?) years ago. Also there is a list of the things I (try to) do daily to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.
I have a few things I have to do later in the summer, but for a few days here, I'm going to choose to make my world a little better, one day at a time.
What do you do in the summertime?
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