summered right into the sun

If I did anything wrong in plotting – not plotting, really – the Best Summer Ever, it’s that I said YES to pretty much anything and everything. Beyond the pure summer camp experiences (field trips, nature walks, beaches, pool time, ice cream, art classes), I also enjoyed a more adult summer (dancing, burlesque shows, a cat circus, live music).

Coupled with my birthday month now being upon us, the pace feels a bit much.

Highlights of the summer!

I took a much more active role than usual in our food garden. I’m typically a more decorative, impulsive gardener, but I’m also more likely to check in on how plants are doing. With two people actively working our tiny backyard farm, it was one of our best years ever!

I went out on adventures with many different groups of people, while also making it a priority to see my given & chosen family in town and further afield. It started to feel almost like the pandemic-driven hosting malaise was over (it’s not over yet, but it’s receding).

I can make baskets! Out of water and reeds! I want to make more time for this, because they’re incredibly useful, fairly easy weird art. It’s also the first fiber craft I’ve really taken to.

a field trip to see afrofuturist costumes in colonial williamsburg

i learned some new ukulele concepts

apparently summer doesn’t hit the black sea officially until late june; we had vast stretches of hot beach to ourselves in constanta

i took several art classes, including one where we made art out of pyrex rods

i got dirty making our yard look cool

ate so much fresh local fruit

sometimes i just lounged outside, with various company

i realized you could do semi-underwater basket weaving in a pool, post-basked-class

i made both this basket and the tomatoes inside

we grew an awful lot of food, including the very first pomegranate from our tree

i made these marbles over a blazing hot little torch

obviously i had to eat some (vegan) ice cream

sometimes i did very little, like this cat!

and of course i spent a ton of time in and around the pool

we finished the summer in the catskills and hudson valley

Try again, fail better?

Routines have NEVER worked for me. I don’t respond well to even my past self scheduling blocks of time or whatever. I can show up at a place where a thing is happening, but don’t expect me to just “play the ukulele” alone at a certain time.

I say this because the one place I failed was in leaving enough time and space to get bored and get creative. I did a lot of getting creative at times and places where things were happening: dance classes, art classes, uke group meetups. I didn’t do much practicing and playing with those things outside of scheduled times.

Some of that was almost certainly newness bias. Glass is a time-consuming hobby that has to be done somewhere with the right materials. Basketry can absorb an afternoon easily – and has an advantage of being very sociable.

Do it again.

That’s sorta the bottom line. I would do it again and again. I didn’t finish this summer as refreshed as I’d imagined, but I did feel like I filled my creative bucket.

Next time I might like to focus more on building my physical resilience? That sort of “I could ride my bike or swim all day” vibe of tween summers.