Summer goals too ambitious | Ann Oxrieder

I’m still laughing at friends’ reactions to a piece I wrote reciting all the things I planned to accomplish this summer. I tallied the time required to complete the items on the list and realized that one summer will not be long enough to get through the stacks of books piled around the house, much less those on reserve at the library. I’ll need to write about 150 pages more to finish the first draft of my novel. And those are just the first two categories of things to do.

By Ann Oxrieder • June 14, 2012 6:31 pm

I’m still laughing at friends’ reactions to a piece I wrote reciting all the things I planned to accomplish this summer. I tallied the time required to complete the items on the list and realized that one summer will not be long enough to get through the stacks of books piled around the house, much less those on reserve at the library. I’ll need to write about 150 pages more to finish the first draft of my novel. And those are just the first two categories of things to do.

No wonder some readers said they felt tired after reading my summer goals.

Creating impossible lists of ways to occupy my time during school breaks has afflicted me since childhood. Even then I experienced angst during the first few days of summer vacation, not because I had any particular plans, only that before school let out the anticipation of the freedom ahead was so exhilarating.

After spending every waking minute imagining the exciting ways I’d spend my summer, I always met the arrival of the event paralyzed by indecision.

One year I accumulated enough vacation to take off work for a month. My husband came home on day three to find me in tears. I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish, but I laid on the couch, like Hamlet, suspended between action and inertia.

With no appointments or meetings ahead, I didn’t know how to use unstructured time. None of the choices seemed suitable, maybe because my head was still at the office and my body was lying on the couch, with neither body part certain how to reconcile with the other. By day five I had recovered and discovered that these transitions take time.

I’m into my second week of school vacation. After completing my things-to-do list I put it away and took a nap. The next day I slept in and met my Spanish friend for coffee and our bilingual practice sessions. Then I went to the mall. I had a few hours before I met friends for margaritas. Now where’s that list?

 

Ann Oxrieder has lived in Bellevue for 35 years. She retired after 25 years as an administrator in the Bellevue School District and now blogs about retirement at http://stillalife.wordpress.com/.