Before I get into today's topic I just wanted to mention that I wrote a new Substack on the need to bring back the blogosphere. Twitter's implosion is giving us a chance to abandon the toxic micro-blogging format altogether and wrest online discourse away from corporate control.
With that out of the way I thought I would get into a rather niche topic that's especially relevant to my fellow educators: avoiding the summer blues. Teaching is a strange job in that it packs more than twelve months worth of work and effort into ten. I don't have my "summers off" as much as I am getting leave time away from the frontline trenches. I started this summer, as I do all of them, in a state of absolute exhaustion.
Once the shock of the end wears off and I start to recover, I am prone to getting depressed. I wondered if I was some kind of freak, since summer is supposed to be the freest, happiest time of the year. I was glad to see a recent Washington Post article about the prevalence of summer seasonal depression to know that I am not alone. Seasonal depression is more common in winter for obvious reasons: cold, lack of light, inability to do a lot of activities. As the article points out, summer has its own environmental stressors, especially as our summer weather and heat are getting more extreme with climate change. Punishing heat and humidity and horrible air from wildfires can make daily life miserable. When it gets cold outside I am still able to go for long walks, I just need to bundle up. When it gets really hot trying to go for a long walk just becomes unbearable.
I wonder if this study noticed if this dynamic was worse among educators. It is not easy going from having almost no time to myself to having the hours of each day stretched out before me empty in need of filling up. Oftentimes I end up filling the time by spending more of it on social media, which usually just ends up making me more unhappy. I remember the summer of 2020 in particular, when COVID made it impossible for us to travel and to enjoy indoor activities. I retreated to social media, which was aflame with things like Donald Trump having protestors gassed so he could have a photo-op in front of a church. Reading about thousands of people dying a day in the pandemic, protestors being brutalized by police, and stressing about the 2020 election just made me completely miserable. On top of that, I was tasked with doing extra prep work by my school to get ready to teach under COVID circumstances, as opposed to the emergency flailing I was thrown into in the spring. It was by far the worst summer since the one in college where I worked two jobs while living friendless in my hometown. (I guess summer depression is not a new thing for me.)
This summer I will get to travel, go to the movies, and hang out in coffee houses, but those things aren't enough. I have been experimenting with some new techniques inspired by my interest in philosophy. In the first case I have taken to heart Marcus Aurelius' advice that when confronted with a problem, you should ask yourself if it can be overcome or not. If yes, then the solution is to take care of it instead of ignoring it. If the answer is no, then stop worrying because there's nothing you can do anyway. In my daily life this means taking care of things that need to be taken care of: cleaning up the house, seeing doctors and dentists, exercise, course preparation, and yard work. I have leaned into the latter thinking of Voltaire's line "we must cultivate our garden" in Candide. Instead of doom scrolling and fretting about the world's iniquities, I am using the power washing to get the grime from my awnings. Every single day I have a checklist that includes 1. Taking care of myself 2. Taking care of the house 3. Reading 4. Writing 5. Doing something active with my kids.
So far my mood has been much improved. For others out there getting hit with the summer blues I prescribe a lot of practical labor and regular habits. Every day I can feel like I've done something while feeling far more relaxed than I do on work days, when I am liable to pass out on the train ride home. I am beginning to wonder if this is what retirement is like. If so, sign me up.
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