WEEK 89/37 — Summer Did Its Job

At some point, you have to stop checking whether the garden is growing and go sit in it.

I have been trying to learn this for about a decade. When the weather is good, enjoy your life. This sounds embarrassingly obvious. It has not been obvious to me.

I have always been good at finding something useful to do. There is usually a problem nearby, and if there isn't, I can probably locate one before lunch.

And if you are a pleaser, there is an almost infinite supply of people willing to be pleased. So, you keep going. It feels responsible. Sometimes it even feels safe.

My problem was rarely that I hadn't done enough. Usually, it was the opposite. Producing was easier than living. Even my free time had homework hiding inside it.

I would read. Research. Plan. Think about the next project, the next place, the next skill, the next version of my life.

Which is how you can spend all day doing other people's work and then spend the evening thinking about your own life without actually entering it.

A remarkably efficient trap.

After years of not really taking vacations, I eventually discovered there is no perfect time to leave. Something will always need doing. The inbox does not stand at the airport waving a small white handkerchief and telling you not to worry. You just go. And most things survive.

That was part of my experiment this summer. Not quitting work. Not becoming irresponsible. Just changing the ratio.

Do the work you already know how to do. Practice the things worth practicing. Then go outside.

We stopped digging up the garden every Tuesday to see whether the roots were still there. And, annoyingly enough, things kept growing without our supervision. Skills improved. Habits became ordinary. Relationships moved around a little. Work continued. A few things quietly died because we stopped feeding them. That is useful information too.

Summer did its job. Now the season is changing. The obvious temptation is to rush back inside, open seventeen spreadsheets, and announce that serious life has resumed. I don't think that's the move.

Playtime isn't over. We are just shifting the balance. There is still tennis. There are still dinners that run long. There should probably still be afternoons that disappear without producing anything more measurable than a pleasant afternoon.

But this is a good time to walk back through the field. What grew? What became easier because of something we did months ago? What are we still dragging around because we have gotten used to the weight?

That is harvest. Not achievement. Recognition. Before deciding what comes next, notice what already happened.

Because once we start looking toward another year, the first instinct is usually to add something. A project. A business line. A language. A skill. A better system. Possibly an app to monitor the better system. Maybe.

But everything new needs somewhere to live. If something deserves more of your life next year, something else probably deserves less. If you want to get genuinely good at one thing, you may have to stop being vaguely interested in five. Less, but better.

And this is why I like beginning this work about ninety days before the true end of the year. Ninety days sounds early. It isn't.

I remember one of those strange lessons from physics class about spinning masses and gyroscopes. You push here. Something happens farther around the circle. The metaphor is almost suspiciously convenient.

A circle has 360 degrees. A year has about 365 days. Ninety days is roughly a quarter-turn. No, life is not a gyroscope. Unfortunately, there will be no formula on the exam. But I like the reminder: Put the input into the system before you expect the output.

If I wait until January to decide what January is for, the idea has had no time to meet reality. Give it a quarter-turn. See what happens.

The exciting new project may reveal three boring pieces of infrastructure hiding behind it. The new commitment may bump into two old ones. You price it. Sketch it. Talk about it. Sleep on it. Reality begins scratching things off the list.

Maybe part of the idea was vanity. Maybe part was fear. Maybe one small piece is actually worth building. Sometimes you discover you don't want it at all. Good. That is planning doing its job.

The point is not to spend fall executing next year before next year arrives. That would just be January wearing a different hat. This is preparation. Recognition first. Then planning. Then a little subtraction. Give the good ideas enough time to ripen before asking them to carry weight.

The Summer Harvest

Take one page. Three questions.

1.        What grew without needing much attention?

2.        What became easier because of work I did earlier?

3.        What am I still forcing that probably should not come with me?

That's enough. No master plan yet.

Maybe summer produced a bumper crop. Maybe almost nothing went according to plan. Maybe the thing you watered every morning sat there looking ungrateful while something in the corner grew three feet when you weren't watching. All of that counts.

Harvest is not collecting evidence that you had a successful year. It is finding out what the field actually did. Some things are ready. Some need another season. Some were weeds we kept watering because the watering can was already in our hand.

We don't need to build next year today. We just need to see clearly enough to know what deserves another season of our lives. Then we can give it the quarter-turn.

Summer did its job.