This summer I'm going to go canoeing every weekend, and learn a new language, and get some serious writing done, it'll be so gr- wait, what? It's July? It's the end of July??
[Sigh.]
I have wasted yet another summer, but here are all the things I kind of knew I wasn't going to do, but had high hopes for in May:
1. Be Outdoorsy
In the mythical land of Doing Something Worthwhile With My Free Time, I aspire to spend less time in front of screens and more time playing with rocks, like the pioneer kids did it. But Athens is so humid, you pretty much need gills just to walk around, let alone to do anything physical, like running or... what else do people even do outside?
2. Be Creative
My Pinterest boards are overflowing with projects I've been dying to try -- recipes, crafts, DIY home decorating, even creative ways to clean. And I swear to myself that the minute summer starts, I'll do them all. But then I turn on Netflix, just to watch one episode of "New Girl" while I eat dinner, and when I look up and it's 2 A.M. and I have to be awake again in four hours. The most creative thing I've done all summer is create a damn good replication of "The Scream" out of hair on the wall of my shower.
3. Be Proactive
Every summer I promise myself that I won't be caught off-guard by fall semester when it hits. I'll do all my school shopping mid-summer, when my bank account is at its peak. Which is kinda like saying ant hills have peaks. Technically, sure, but it's not exactly impressive. Regardless, that meager peak is the best time to buy the colorful folders, overabundance of notebooks, and fancy pens I love so much, but which I cannot afford in the first week of school when I'm between my last summer paycheck and my first school paycheck. With the best of intentions, I got on Amazon in late June, but somehow all I had in my cart was a cashmere mermaid tail blanket.
4. Be Adventurous
Spontaneous road trips, off-trail hiking, impulsive tattoos, all things I daydream of, but will never do. I am a creature of habit, the result of a bunch of positive loops that end up being not so positive.
Me: [Checks Tumblr real quick.]
Tumblr: [Is full of studyblrs to motivate me to get sh*t done.]
Me: [Keeps scrolling anyway, apparently shameless.]
Roommate (coming home several hours later): What did you do today?
Me: ...
Roommate: JK, I saw your posts, let's watch that washing machine one again.
Me: [Scrolls through Tumblr with roomie.]
#truefriendship
5. Be A Morning Person
This summer I was determined to turn myself into a morning person. It just sounds so idyllic. I would love to wake up, read a good book while I sip my coffee, take full advantage of my day. But I've always been more of a
stay-up-til-4-wandering-aimlessly-through-Wikipedia kind of person, and this whole mandatory getting out of bed thing for my summer job is lowkey killing my soul.
6. Last And Most Important: Read
I was that weird bookworm kid before college. I was that kid who got to class and immediately pulled out a book to read until the bell rang. The only detention I ever received was for reading in class. But college has changed reading for me. I don't want to say "ruin," because I know once I get out of this paradoxical bubble of freedom and stress, I will pick up reading again. But these four months are not enough time to break the association college has formed in my mind between books and internal death.
Summer is nearly over, and I have done exactly zero things I wanted to do. But when my lack of productivity starts to give me a nasty case of impostor syndrome, I hold onto one of April Ludgate's rare, but beautiful, moments of sincerity:
