Solving Summer Blues
Anticipation of an event can be just as meaningful as the event itself.
Students wait the whole school year for summer. When it does come around there is a high level of stress relief. After a little while though there are times where we can find ourselves in a loop of nothingness. We do not do anything. Our days have no structure and we might even feel like school was not so bad. Summer blues is taking over. There are a few things that are within our control that we can tweak in a way to try to get over this momentary feeling of sadness. Personally I would break it down into three main points.
1. Plan Social Time
Make plans with friends. This is better than meeting up impromptu in the sense that we create anticipation for the event of meeting up. Anticipation of an event can be just as meaningful as the event itself. Something I want to work on is simply meeting up with people without a planned activity. So the plan to meet up is there but the activity plan is not. This seems somewhat scary to me but almost every time I get proof that there is nothing to be scared of.
2. Stay Active (physically and mentally)
In a time without structure, you can try finding some kind of structure through exercise or even work. This summer I had to do an internship for my school program. It was physical work with a lot of walking. My average step count during my month of working was around 15 000 steps per day. The baseline for activity was way higher than it was during the whole year, furthermore I went to the gym every other day. This might be too much activity for some or not enough for others. The point is to find your way of staying active.
3. Respect Parkinson's Law
You have a lot of time, but as Parkinson’s law states – work fills the time allotted to it. This means that a task will take the amount of time you make for it. Either an hour or a week. This is very important to keep in mind and to possibly take advantage of. The solution here is to set deadlines. For example, my blog has a deadline which is Monday mornings at 08:30 (I admit to having a few hick-ups here and there). This means that if I start writing on Sunday evening (like I usually tend to) I will finish by midnight because I enjoy my sleep.
There are only three weeks of summer left. There is still time to create a bucket list for the few remaining weeks of summer. Here are some of what is/was on my list as food for thought:
- Go get brunch
- Play beach volleyball
- Run the distance of half a marathon
- Participate in Pub Golf
- Get pictures with best friend
With the little time that is left it feels important to try to get the most out of it. Let me know if any of this inspired You!
This Week's Suggestions:
🎶 Secret Sky set by IMANU and Buunshin:
This DJ set from April 2021 has been recommended to me since it came out by a close friend of mine. I finally went ahead and listened to it this week. Might have been the best decision of the week. It is a very dark and heavy drum & bass and dubstep set which is probably not the perfect fit for everyone but it really made my whole weak.
🎬 The 4 things it takes to be an expert:
Ever heard of the 10 000 hour rule? It states that we need to practise a craft for 10 000 hours (that is pretty much 3 hours of practise a day for 9 years) to become an expert in any field. This video breaks down what is an expert and how these experts function. Veritasium is truly an amazing channel, the video is so well crafted and so entertaining to watch.
That is all for this 50th blog post!