Back to school ads already?  Can’t we stop and just enjoy the remaining two (that’s right, two!) meteorological months of summer?  I assume the candy corn displays will start haunting (ha! I made a funny) Walgreen’s “Seasonal” display aisles in a matter of seconds.

People wail plaintively, as though there were some other way to wail, “Alas, where hast summer gone?  Wither the year?  Donde esta mi youth?”  I know some folks who distinguish themselves verbally, don’t I?

Summer, the year, your youth – unless you’re coming off a serious bender – are all right here.  I’m trying to stop looking only at the oncoming stampede of What’s Ahead and look around more often at the mildly tacky (in the sticky sense) What’s Here.  I’m not always successful at it.  I’m a worrier warrior by nature.  I love calendars and planners.  I don’t like surprises.  It’s often a question of knowing what’s coming up, knowing what I can do to plan/prepare, and knowing that most of the time, life will go all Woody Allen on me anyway. 

I try to heed this song.

I love that song. I can’t listen to it too often as its melancholia is an audio autumnal dusk and sometimes the chorus gives me Seasonal Affective Disorder.  But behind the brooding is the message.  Now, it should be noted that I tend to ignore anything beyond the “Don’t Dream it’s Over” line and have turned the song into my own anthem of not wishing I were somewhere else in life, somewhere else in time.  Walls between us are probably not always a bad thing.  Like if we’re in a bathroom or one of us is in an OR. 

Hey now, hey now.

One thing I’ve dropped in lieu of rehearsals/blogging/writing has been journaling.  I refuse to call it keeping a diary.  Diaries, for me, denote easily-picked locks on Hello Kitty notebooks chock full o’ worries about gym class and dreams about kissing boys.  Except for this one.  I’m not up to either task. 

I love looking back at 15 years of journals I’ve kept on and off.  Unfortunately more off than on.  I don’t always write when busy, which is exactly when I should be writing. 

On my darker days, I journal just to leave the world a small whisper of evidence that I took up some space on this planet.  On brighter days, I journal for the same reason.

Yes, we’re more than midway through the year.  Yes, we’re nigh on summer’s midpoint.  (Meteorologically speaking, of course.  Going by starts of school, which are getting earlier and earlier, we’re in the middle of winter already.  Remember when school started *after* Labor Day and classrooms weren’t the temperature of the surface of the sun?)  I’m not quite at midlife but I feel it coming toward me with the full force of Christmas ads in October.  I am bracing myself for that.

I wish I’d journaled in high school and college.  I remember little of those years – either I was super boring, super busy, or so pained that I didn’t want to leave record of it.  Possibly I knew on some level that those years weren’t as formative as my early twenties.  Perhaps my adolescence was delayed on a macro scale. 

Ah, who am I kidding?  I don’t remember those years because my brain is filled with children and routines and wanting more babies and The Project and seven shows’ worth of lines from the past year and choreography for an upcoming production and cupcakes and all those things that make up the small moments of life.  Yes, yes, John Lennon.

This August, an experiment. This seems to be the year of Life Experiments, after all. 

I will list one thing I do every day that matters to me or someone else.  It’s my SFD (as opposed to BFD) List – something small to leave a mark on the world, to be able to say I was here and I did some good.  I’m not trying to change the world; at best I will improve someone’s day.  At worst I’ll give myself a chuckle.

I’ll share on or about August 31^st/September 1^st.

July was not a particularly noteworthy month for me.  Let’s look at the numbers, shall we?

• I exercised 4-5 times per weeks, each week.
• I made 8 new desserts and 4 tried-and-true desserts.
• I said a Holy Yes! to being in a show and rehearsed 50 hours this month.
• I had 0 dates with Huzzy.
• I yelled at my kids 1 time.
• I threw 1 family dinner to celebrate 2 birthdays.
• I ate outside 4 times.
• I wrote 5 pages of notes for T(S)P.
• I had 0 Girls’ outings.
• I taught my kids to count to 20.
• I went to 1 Farmers’ Market
• We saw family 8 times.
• I went to the dentist for the first time in 4 years and had 0 cavities and minimal plaque!
• I did 29 loads of laundry.

 

Woo and hoo.

I’ve set modest August goals, mostly because I have a show that will be in tech week the first week in August and then midnight shows once a week that will toy with my sleep schedule for three days after.  I also am picking up a gig where I’m choreographing an original show.  I haven’t gotten the music yet and am not a fast choreographer, so I foresee some late nights.  Good thing my sleep schedule will be messed up. Those 5 hours I’m up after the boys go to sleep may actually work out fine.

• Fill out paperwork for nursery school.
• Throw birthday party for twins with minimal upset.
• Teach my boys one new thing a day.
• Have social/fun outing with a friend at least once.
• Have one date night.
• Keep exercising 4-5 times a week.
• Eat healthier but treat myself 1-2 times a week.
• Write a draft of t(S)P
• Take the twins to the park by myself!
• Choreograph the show (pending receipt of music/script).
• Find and join a volunteer organization.
• Keep my SFD list, and live with the goal of doing something daily that’s a SFD.
• Begin decorating my office.
• Meditate – I’d love to do this everyday, but like journaling, it’s one of the first things I don’t do when overwhelmed, which is silly.
• Journal
• Be grateful and full of great.
• And blog.

 

We have a whole lotta summer/year/life left!