design your summer

Each year Gretchen Rubin talks about the concept of designing your summer on her Happier Podcast.

There are many great reasons to design your summer. Many book bloggers and podcasts are putting out their summer reading lists. They are full of memories of when they read certain books, because they were at the pool or beach, or maybe on vacation, and reading the book while doing something different made that memory stronger.

Summer time for many of us as kids signaled no school and summer felt more carefree. Our schedule was different, we had different activities. But when we become adults, that feeling can easily be absorbed by our responsibilities and we forget to carve out that feeling of summer adventure, and before you know it, it has passed. Having school age kids at home definitely helped me with that, but now that they’re grown, it doesn’t seem as easy.

I also live in a climate that is similar all year long, so we don’t have the weather markers to remember things by. When someone talks about a memory tied to a summer at the beach, I go to the beach all year so I often don’t have that time association.

A big reason to design your summer is that people with Parkinson’s commonly have apathy as a symptom. It’s easier to let things slip by unless we really push ourselves to make the effort, but once it’s happening we’re usually happy that we did.

So pick an arbitrary time that summer is starting for you and make a list of few things that you’ll do this summer. For many in the U.S., the Memorial Day weekend is the kick off to summer. They can be big or small but a few things you’re going to do with intention. They can be date specific like we are staying at a beach cabin next month for a weekend and I’m using that as my summer kick off. It could also be something like instead of walking in your neighborhood, you’ll walk once a week at a new park, take an online or in person class, make a summer reading list, cook three new dishes with summer fruit, start that new hobby, visit a few museums, have coffee with a friend, whatever you want. But write it down, be intentional, and enjoy your small or big summer adventures.

I’ve even taken my design my summer into my wardrobe. I don’t have a winter wardrobe. I have a wardrobe for when it’s hot, or really hot. So I started breaking up my wardrobe into capsules with my imaginary seasons and it’s been fun to pull out my outfits for the next season that I forgot I had.

~ Ask questions, seek answers, make friends.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend. ❤️