...What a crappy summer.

Yes, I still have summers.

Not the "Oh, it's warmer outside, what am I doing this weekend?" type of summer, but the "No students are around, I can get things done at the office without being bothered for the next three months" type. Along with this I have the opportunity to burn off vacation hours at will (or whim) without huge deadlines hanging over my head. 'Quite a change from what I'd envisioned myself doing for the rest of my life about two decades ago.

Way back in 1990, while finishing up what I thought would be my last year of college, I was preparing to enter the adult workforce as a bona-fide graphic designer, looking forward to a future of being locked away in a gray cubicle and its drafting board with the distant smell of developing fluids lingering in the air from the office's darkroom. A bleak existence, I'd thought (and still do), but it was what I'd been training for during the six years I took going through college. A life without classes, a life of 40 hours a week, twelve months a year.

I decided to take what I called my "Last Summer Tour '90" in which I would take nearly a month and travel primarily across the southeastern U.S. and a tangent express route up to Canada, visiting friends and relatives culminating with a surprise visit to Steve as he performed at the Jenny Wiley State Park outdoor theatre in Kentucky. I'd even designed concert-like tee-shirts to be printed for the adventure (I'd had years of silkscreening experience by that time) thinking I'd have a bunch produced to be worn each day of the trip or perhaps to be sold as novelties to friends in order to help fund the venture. In the end my characteristic procrastination, a trait I've still yet to shake completely, won out and the designs were relegated to the stack of uninitiated ideas bound in numerous aging, yellowing sketch books I still have in storage.

Though the shirts never were realized, I wound up taking the trip due to the insistence of my boss at the time. I'd been filling in for the vacated full-time graphic designer position at the campus print shop for a few weeks and it had been a bit too much responsibility for too little pay... I'd still been earning the minimum wage that university student assistants were paid (and still are today, though it was a sight less in those days). The stress was taking its toll and I was encouraged to get out of Dodge for a while. Driving the ambling miles between Florida and Kentucky, I never made it to Canada as intended due to the amount of fun being had with Steve and the mountains surrounding Prestonsburg, KY, required my attention for a few more days than planned. I'd had a wonderful time that summer.

Ironically, perhaps, what I thought would be my last, wasn't. Not by a long shot. In fact, in only three years since then have I held a position which required me to clock in at 8 and walk out at 5, Monday through Friday, January through December. Most of the years summers since then, I've been at a local university in a department which largely shuts down over the summer months, affording me the opportunity to experience the sort of freedom I believe many others would envy. Oversleep? No big deal... I'll get there eventually. Major movie opening today? Hey, let's go this afternoon to avoid the evening crowds. Impromptu road trip? No problem... let me change my outgoing message at the office and we'll be on our way.

Summers mean, really, the opportunity for me to catch up on all of the work related ideas I come up with during the previous school year. I'm not bothered by shows being produced, I don't have to worry about meetings, I go shirtless over in the scene shop (where the temperature sometimes reaches 100 degrees during the dog days), and I basically work at my own pace. Considering the aforementioned fight with procrastination this sometimes isn't a good thing, but I've been doing well enough on the self initiated list of chores written back in May.

The crappy part of all of this is that even though I've had a great deal of freedom this summer I really haven't taken the opportunity to do that much with it. I feel as though the time has been wasted. The gas prices have been a problem with travel (the truck only getting 11mpg), but I can't completely blame that.

I just don't feel the drive to do anything for myself nowadays. I lack the desire to get out and... DO... anything. Going to the gym, a practice I'd loved and kept consistently since December, has fallen to the wayside since mid June. I'd thought perhaps I'd spend a great deal of time near the pool, playing with Steve and Vicki's girls and developing a bronze tone I haven't had in fifteen years. I thought perhaps I'd visit the Appalachian Trail again for a few days. I thought that I would do... SOMETHING.

Instead I look at the calender and wonder what I did with the time. I'm not talking about work here... I'm talking about how did I grow, what did I experience in the world, how did I enjoy life in the last couple of months...

...and I 'got nothin' in terms of answers.

What a crappy summer.