Time alarm clock went off: oh wait, it’s summer, no alarm clock, Minutes spent thinking of activities and adventures to embark on: 30, Number of activities thought up: 3 (eat, sleep, write)
With summer stretching lazily ahead, it’s easy to get caught up in the timelessness of it all. There’s always tomorrow, and then tomorrow after that to do things. Whole summers have passed made up of todays that have been waiting on tomorrows. There are so many possibilities: a summer job, a road trip, a camp, personal goals, this, that and the other. “Carpe diem,” my mother says. Seize the day. But what, in a day, to seize?
The first couple days of summer, I would come home and go to my room and look around at the mess and frantically think of what homework I had to finish, only to realize a few disorienting seconds later that, wait, no homework. No school. Ah, relief. No stress, no worries. At least not until August rolls around and the summer assignments on my desk will call to me and I’ll scramble, half frenzied, to finish them decently, pulling out my hair and accumulating deep, black circles under my eyes, and forgoing meals and reading tiny print till my eyes water and ache and writing and typing till my wrists burn and my fingers are stiff. Ah yes, no stress till then.
But frankly, having no worries and having no stress can be kind of boring. I like having something to do. I like having checklists, tacked on my wall, taped on my door, written on my hand. There is a certain joy in crossing off an unruly task with a marker, a crayon, a sharpie – the line thick and dark. Done. It lends a sense of accomplishment. I set about making a summer to-do list. Plant tomatoes. Plant sunflowers. Water plants. Clean my room. Learn guitar. Go to the beach. Go camping. Learn French. Have a garage sale. Take my good old dog on a walk. Write a letter. Mail it. Write a story. Write a book.
Yes, that last one’s been on my list since third grade and probably will stay on there till I’m 30. Yes, learning French may be a bit far fetched, and yes, cleaning my room might prove to be difficult, but so what? It’s nice to dream.
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