Summer Lessons

Cleaning the fan yesterday made me kind of ill. I'm better now that I've slept some, but last night wasn't pleasant. I ended up going to bed pretty early. Then again, I probably needed to do that.

Summer's winding down. Like I said before, summer isn't officially over for a while, but when you see the kids going back to school, it's over as far as everyone is concerned. Yeah, there will still be some weeks of heat, but for the most part, we're headed toward Fall. Thank all the gods for that.

Did I learn anything this summer? See, my new book in therapy (which is over building resilience) talks a lot about looking at positive lessons even when a situation is dire. In the spirit of that, here we go.

1. I learned a lot about the exhaustive power of fans. This house is never really all that cool. This summer, my roommate did all this angling of fans so that some of them would be drawing heat out of places instead of just trying to blow air around hot rooms. Of all the various things we've tried over the years, this seems to have had the most impact. There are rooms in  the house that are the most tolerable they've ever been.

2. If all I can manage to do are small goals, that's okay. However, I have to make those small goals a priority. This didn't really start until later in the summer, but at least it started. There are several small things I decided I WOULD do and made sure to think about them every morning as I was waking up. Before I go to sleep, I review how well I handled them. I've always had a lot of problems with consistency, so perhaps this new method will work.

3. I'm happier when my hands are occupied. I stay busy with yarn projects this summer and it did wonders for my state of mind. By keeping my creativity up, I kept my spirits up. Sure, things still got bad sometimes, but seeing the progress I was making helped my mood a lot.

I think these are three good lessons for the season. They're valuable ones that I can use in years to come. Hell, maybe I'll even get to the point where I can enjoy summer again.