Today over lunch I was asked how I planned to fill my time this summer. With Metro Nashville schools letting out in a week, most folks at work are due for a schedule shuffle that will likely involve changes in child care, summer camps, summer school, sports clubs, etc. I am never really sure if the seven to ten weeks of summer are better for parents than the rest of the year scheduling wise, but here they come.
I on the other hand have nothing in store when school lets out other than a faster commute. My new route takes me through three school zones, although only one really bogs me down getting to work. Hockey season has come to an untimely end (as far as my team is concerned) for this season, so all that is left on television is baseball and golf. Neither of the two are particularly interesting to me, so I tune out the sports world until football pre-season starts.
Summers have been rough for the last few years. Through college, it meant the lack of a paycheck and the thrill-a-minute times of the newspaper. My first summer before college and the two that followed were spent working as a camp counselor for Youth Incorporated. I often think back on those summers and how much I miss that kind of work, where knowing anything about a computer was nothing more than a convenient skill used to design last-day-of-camp awards. Somewhere, there are a couple hundred teenagers that would probably be more than a little embarrassed if their parents broke out the "most improved swimmer" award when their prom date came over.
The summer that followed was my first dose of the non-newspaper life that I would eventually be joining full-time. I worked as an intern with the American Junior Golf Association in their Braselton, Ga. headquarters, getting a heavy dose of Adobe InDesign and working exclusively on the Mac. Again, two things that I spend most of my days doing now. It was also my first look at how a summer would be without classes or a 7 a.m. wakeup bell. The time spent at work was a pleasure, but one cannot help but feel out of place in the time between.
Today I am working on various projects that really have no bearing on my day-to-day. My college fraternity's alumni group is getting fairly pro-active with the undergraduate chapter, so I am using that as a bit of motivation to revisit some old systems on their Web site and newsletter. I still tweak my first open source project a bit every now and then when prompted by a user's request. None of these things suggest the care-free days of summer.
It is easy to get almost worked up into a panic when you look at life and realize that the next 40 to 50 years (I have already given up on the prospect of ever retiring) will be spent exactly the same way: get up, go to work, come home, small entertainments, go to sleep. Perhaps the proper reconciliation between the care-free days of going to class (occasionally) with nights that end well into the next morning versus going to work (without fail) and being in bed before the end of the nightly news takes time.
I think I'm getting better about it.