A letter about this summer
Good riddance but also sweet dreams.
Everyone is ruminating about the end of summer. I am one of those people who observes Labor Day as the official end of the summer and not September 21st, so yes, it’s over.
It appears as though we all agreed to swing for the fences this year. Whether you observed it in a BRAT or demure manner, I’m reading Substack after Tweet after Instagram Story about how much this summer has impacted all of us, for better or for worse.
Summer is extremely romantic, and thus the victim of extreme romanticization. It’s no different than March to May or December to February length-wise, but I don’t know anyone who looks forward to those blocks as much as we all do June to August. Summer has different rules. We hold ourselves to high expectations and pack our bucket lists full of goals and ideas, wanting to have the most fun and look the best and do nothing but travel.
With social media, summer is one big game of keeping up with the Joneses. If you live in New York, you see everyone at the beach every weekend. You see people going out on a Monday. You see people with new clothes. You see people not working. It seems like somebody is outliving you during the summer from the second it starts to the second it ends. Maybe I’m just bleeding insecurity out on my own blog, but I’ve gathered this consensus through many of you, too.
Summer exhausts me. It feels like both a marathon and a sprint. This summer left a metallic taste in my mouth. I felt like I shed new skin three times over and don’t recognize the girl that I was in June, but also relate to her all too well. That may sound dramatic, but the older I get, the more formative summer becomes. It’s no longer just a break from school or a chance to get extra freckles, it’s the time where everyone is speeding up and I need to jog along the highway to keep up. I metamorphose with each weekend, each getaway, each week that goes by. It was a bit of a hard summer for me, I circled back into some old anxiety-driven habits that I was hoping I had kicked a few years ago. Admitting that on this platform is scary and uncomfortable to me, but I’ve wanted to be more honest and open. Goals for the fall and so forth…
I ended my summer on a trip to Oregon with some friends from college. I just went upstate to touch grass a few weeks back as I’m sure you all recall, but this trip out West felt different. We stared up into the sky and stared at the Milky Way peeking through stronger the longer we looked, surrounded by thousands if not millions of its neighbors. I saw waterfalls and mountains and horses and trees so tall I couldn’t see the tops. Why would anyone choose to live in New York when places like this exist? I was one missed subway away from packing up and moving to a cabin on the river. Upon return, I was grateful to be in my apartment and in my routine, but a quaint life away still ruminates in the back of my mind.
On a less serious note, this trip taught me to never skip a vacation without buying merch. One of my favorite Substack’s Feed Me wrote about how gauche hotel merch is now, but there’s nothing chicer than a “Don’t Mess With Texas” tee from Dallas-Fort Worth. I returned with not only that but a mug, magnet, and shot glass. To many more delicacies wrapped in my sweaters in my suitcase from many more places.
As I’m only three years post-grad, I still observe September as the ceremonious start of a new year. I feel like I need to make a new vision board and set new resolutions, the ones I made back in January meaningless with who I am in August. I also just got a haircut, which never fails to take some weight off of your shoulders.
While summer is traditionally seen as the season to slow down, I’m hoping to take that lesson to heart this fall. There aren’t many roses to smell in the concrete jungle, but when I see one, I need to teach myself to stop. I want to become better friends with myself. I want to let the Joneses go miles ahead of me.