By Mike Maddaloni on Monday, September 04, 2023 at 11:23 PM with 2 comments
Labor Day in the US is considered by most people to be the last day of Summer. Granted planetarily it’s not for a few weeks more that Summer becomes Fall. At least here in the States the start of school – primary, secondary and even college – marks the end of when people or families will take summer vacation, though as I have talked about earlier there’s plenty of opportunity to get away thru the Fall.
That last statement is my opinion, and many people I know don’t share it. Back to school is pretty much the end of Summer in many minds. And if three months of summer was not enough, more and more Sum-sum-summertime is shrinking: many schools are starting classes as early as mid-August and some that do start after Labor Day are starting extracurriculars and athletics in the eighth month. This happened with my clan, as high school and club sports started the first full week of August. Fortunately we were able to squeeze a week away just prior to the restart of kids activities, and as you can see in the photo accompanying this post it was a great week at that.
With the start of school comes the start (or rather restart) of structure. Predictable schedules return with the kids return to classes. I am coming at this from a point-of-view of a household where both parents work remotely, and many reading this may homeschool or have other scenarios. Last-minute playdates and picking up of random summer job shifts and the logistics that accompany them slow to a manageable crawl around the weekends. That structure doesn’t make things less hectic, just more predictable. For as much as employers want to offer a work-life balance, stuff happens. Only having to work to one calendar for a majority of the day is a joy.
With summer in the rear-view mirror, the view is also blended with regret. Why didn’t we do this? Why didn’t we do that? If we only had more time! Where I don’t have as much of this as do others, I of course have some regrets. I try to focus on what we DID do, and in this day and age we also have about a million photos on our mobile devices to remind ourselves about it.
As I eluded to earlier and want to state overtly so it is not missed – I love Fall. September until the first snow fall is a great time, and read my post about top 10 reasons why that I wrote almost a decade ago that I still hold true.
Deconstructing the Change of Seasons
We can’t go back, but we can appreciative what we have. And yes, we can plan better for the future to mitigate any regret next Summer. I’ll also leave you with this – Summer by Buffalo Tom, somewhat of a sad song but one I listen to a lot this time of the year and the inspiration for the title of this post. Click on the link in the title or watch it embedded below.
This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.
Interesting point about regretting not doing enough over the summer, when instead we could focus on what did do—especially with the aide of all the digital photos.
Maybe because those digital photos sit in a realm of a device. Maybe if those photos were in print form we might be more likely to have a tangible connection with them?
Speaking of tangible, one of my favorite things about fall is being able to collect a leaf while on a walk. When I get home, I’ll write up a little explanation of how we found the leaf, where, who was there. Then that card gets slipped with the leaf into a book.
Honestly, I haven’t really pulled out any of the leaves or cards from the random books. Kinda like the digital photos, the pressed leaves remain tucked away.
Maybe I should have a dedicated book for leaf pressing, and then eventually put them into an album.
I think the action of picking up the leaf, carrying it, feeling the texture, then writing the mini story is the fun and memorable part.
Regarding leaf collecting and writing about the experience… such activities seem so old fashioned, yet are things future generations will miss from what *really* happened back in the day.
The Hot Iron strives to present unique content and point-of-view on business, technology and other topics by Mike Maddaloni, a technology strategist based in Appleton, Wisconsin.
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