The summer blues

A couple days ago I noted that I did better taking classes in the summer as a teenager (once I had grown out of the "childhood" ways of "having fun") because then I wasn't idle.

I didn't do so well with the traditional teenaged "fun" things: I wasn't in a garage band, I wasn't that good at sports (and didn't like many sports), we lived far away from the nearest mall so "hanging out" wouldn't have been a thing (and who would I have hung out with? I was unpopular enough that I probably would have wound up hanging out alone a lot of the time). Laying around the pool was also out; I burned easily and I also bulked up as a young teen and was extremely self-conscious in a swimsuit.

So there wasn't a lot for me to DO. At least, of things I felt like I "should" be doing. (Jobs were also hard to come by. I wasn't allowed to work during the school year - that was a dictum at my prep school more than my parents', but still. So getting a "fun" job was out. (I also didn't have a driver's license until I was 18, so that was limiting).

And when I don't have things to DO, I get sad and twitchy. I am still like that as an adult. Part of the reason I knit so many things is that I can't just sit at home on weekends and not do stuff - and I probably go to Sherman more than is really ideal for my wallet (or consumption-of-resources-wise) because it is something to DO that is not sitting at home.

And yeah. When I read years later about "Churchill's Black Dog" (and some other writer who applied it to his winter SAD), I immediately recognized it. I do get....something....in the summers. It's not quite Holly Golightly's "mean reds," it's not quite the blues. It's a feeling of....I don't know. That the rest of the world is out having fun and I don't know how to have fun in the same way as normal people do, and so....there's both the sense of "I'm not having fun" and also "and I'm not because I'm not normal."

So yeah, part of it is "idleness chafes me" but part of it also almost what has been dubbed FOMO - fear of missing out. The idea that "if other people are out having fun, maybe I'm really missing something good"? I don't know. I do know that when I see people lying around a pool, I don't want to join them, but....that seems almost the stereotypical summer-teen thing to do?

In more recent years, I taught; the past couple years I've done research and updated my classes. Having useful work to do helps, but I do admit that summer is still my least favorite season. I am definitely more of a fall or winter person - most of the things I like are indoors things, I do better in cold weather, the holidays I like tend to be ones that revolve around decorating and making special food for people.