May 01, 2005

Summer Plans

I have two summers every year.

The first summer will begin as soon as I finish grading portfolios and hand in my grades. Hopefully that will be sometime this week. Early summer consists of May and most of June. During this time, I am working at home and my kids are in school. Early summer is a time for writing, gardening, and thinking. I will have the quiet house to myself every day until 2 pm.

This year I am vowing to make use of early summer to devote some time to my own writing. My plan is to write every day from 9 until 11 am, and then again from noon until 2 pm. Four whole hours of writing! For me that seems huge. There will be a few days when I have to go into campus for meetings and such, so I have subtracted those days from my plan, but even so - I will have 27 days of writing during early summer.

And of course, outside that four hours, I will still have free time to do all the other things I like to do in early spring. I can't wait to begin gardening again. One of my favorite treats is to go to the gardening center to pick out plants. I love walking through rows and rows of flowers, all so bright-coloured and tempting, and choosing which ones to plant. I buy seeds and plants for my vegetable garden at a local stand that is just around the corner from my parents' house. My parents have bought their plants there for as long as I can remember. I am looking forward to wandering through the greenhouse to smell the basil, the onions, the chives.

Late summer consists of July and the first half of August. That part of the summer goes by fast, and I don't even try to get any writing done. Well, that isn't true exactly, because I take my journal everywhere I go. But late summer I spend with my kids. Late summer is for long camping trips, days at the beach, picnics, or just hanging out in our living room, everyone lying on the floor complaining about how hot it is. I am not someone who can work in the heat so when we have a heat wave, I am not likely to even turn the computer on. Luckily, Neighbor Family (they live just about exactly a mile away, but around here, that is a neighbor) have an above-ground pool in their backyard so on hot days we will all go over there. And if we are really lucky, the heat waves will come when we are at camp, with huge oak trees to shade us, a breeze off the river, and the whole deep cold river to swim in.

6 comments:

Yankee, Transferred said...

What a luxury all that writing time will be, and I feel sure we will be the ones (besides you) who benefit from your exercises!

Phantom Scribbler said...

Ah, YT, I'm not sure she means to benefit us. This sounds like a plan for non-bloggy writing accomplishments.

Either way, it sounds like a great summer for you, jo(e).

reverendmother said...

Four hours a day for writing--I'm simultaneously green with envy and terrified to think of what that would be like.

Pilgrim/Heretic said...

Wait! Wait! Where are the blogging hours in that schedule? I don't see any blogging hours!

Yankee, Transferred said...

Even if you write on paper for yourself, we benefit from the exercise! A writer is a writer is a writer, and the more you write, the more fun we have in the long run!

jo(e) said...

Pilgrim: If I reserve four hours each day for writing, that still leaves twenty hours for blogging. Assuming of course that I don't need any time at all for sleeping, eating, or spending time with my family.

Yankee Transplant: I am curious myself to see what kind of synergy there will be between my non-blog writing and my blog writing. I am hoping that they do feed off each other in a positive way.