Last Monday and Tuesday I had all this energy and so many ideas for what I was going to do with my "5-day weekend." Now it's Sunday and, other than a couple loads of laundry, paying some bills, getting Calvin groomed, and hanging out with the cats, I appear to have done essentially nothing. I have no idea where the time went --or the energy I had in anticipation of this vacation.
It's not exactly that I regret sitting around doing nothing for the last 4 days. I think I'm just having a really hard time having an "adult summer" this year. For one thing, I'm keenly feeling the loss of my childhood summers this time. Summers when I was a kid meant sleeping in and playing all day. It meant running through the sprinkler and the feel of wet grass and mud in between my toes; the occasional popsicle; climbing trees; riding bikes; running around in the "fog" behind the mosquito spray trucks; drying off in front of the box fan after a bath; hours spent working on jigsaw puzzles; trips to the public library and staying up into the wee hours of the morning reading --I read SO many books every summer! I often stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Cory for the 4th of July, playing with good sparklers at their neighbor's house (not these crappy sparklers they make now), and watching the Springfield city fireworks from lawn chairs in the parking lot of Gabatoni's with the neighbors. Heck, I think my heathen atheist soul even misses Vacation Bible School.
I've never completely gotten over the disappointment of losing week after week after week of freedom each summer, but it's usually not this hard.
I don't think it's just the desire for a full-summer vacation, though. My lack of interest in going to work has been there most of the spring, too, I think. I just want to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. Especially since I never know when the energy and the desire are going to hit at the same time. Like this weekend: the weather is absolutely perfect for working outside, going on a picnic, hiking, painting the house. But I don't feel like doing any of those things. Which should be okay, because I also have a list of "quiet" things I need/want to do. Heck, some of them are piled next to me right now, waiting until I finish writing this.
So why do I feel like I'm doing it all wrong? Why am I feeling an increasing amount of sadness, regret, and longing? Is it because our summers are so short, so perfect, and so precious? Is it because I feel like I'm getting older every day? That my life gets shorter every day? Is it because I'm worried that I'm wasting my time on the wrong priorities? Is it because I want more out of life than I have a right to expect?
All I can say at this moment is that I do NOT want to go back to work tomorrow. I'm supposed to be covering a bunch of items at a meeting tomorrow, and I could care less. I haven't been keeping a list of them as they've come up; I've actually been brushing them aside until I have to deal with them. Which might actually be a good thing in that I haven't been obsessing over work things. But, it also means I'm going to have to go back through weeks' worth of emails tomorrow morning to prep for the meeting since I haven't been prepping all along. Which is fine, too. I just don't want to do it.
I suspect that I need my job in order to keep my life structured and my brain stable. One of the downsides of those long summer vacations was that the longer I did nothing, the lazier I got. And the more moody, dissatisfied, listless, and/or depressed I got. I realized this in my college years, and it's the main reason I'm not sure I would completely quit working even if I could afford to do so.
But I don't think that's what is happening today. This feels more like, dare I say it, some sort of mini mid-life crisis. I'm tired of every day being devoured by the "have to" so there's no time or energy left for the "want to." I'm tired of feeling like the hourglass of my life is emptying faster and faster while I'm being sucked down into the merciless sand. This summer feels different. I feel a little more alive, a little more motivated, a little more aware, a little more appreciative. And I want desperately to relish it. More than I can remember wanting it before, I want to have all the time in the world to do whatever I want until I've sated that need and am ready to go back to the old daily routine.
Instead I'm going to post this and then move on to working on my "quiet" projects, like typing up my "affirmations" I created for my counseling work. (I can't use my tools if I'm not carrying my toolbox. I might have to add more tools to my box now, but...) And adding information to my gardening spreadsheets so I can actually find the information I need when I need it instead of having to flip back through my garden journals trying to find what I planted where. I'm going to drink my coffee and watch the chipmunk and squirrels on the bird feeders, and maybe refill the bird bath. Hopefully by the end of the day I will feel like I did enough productive things and relaxing things that my vacation wasn't completely wasted.
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