Gone Days Of Summer

August has long been considered the primary vacation month of the year in America, especially for those with children at home.  It's the one warm-weather month in which structured summer activities for kids are generally over, but school hasn't yet started (for most).

It seems to me that this year, the second August of the COVID-19 pandemic era has resulted in more time off for more people than ever before.  I'll take it one step further and say it seems a lot of folks simply decided to take the entire month off from their normal work schedules -- whatever that means these days.

My perception is based on an unofficial tally of certain random things being at an all-time high:

• People needlessly bragging about their August vacations on social media.

• Number of 'out of the office' responses I get to work calls and emails.

• No production of otherwise live TV shows, and/or vacationing TV personalities.  (Some of this comes from the Summer Olympics, which generated hundreds / thousands of hours of new content, and kept other channels re-running old material.)

Yes, a lot of people missed out on their summer vacations last year, and that wasn't going to happen this year.  They also probably wanted to compensate for the time and money saved during their stay-cation last year.

But I also get the feeling that the pandemic has changed things to a more European-style, don't-work-too-hard-in-the-summer here.  With people 'working' from anywhere, they have more latitude about when, where, and how they work.

Maybe, just maybe, we have a new summer way of doing things, one I wish we'd had when I was younger.

Full disclosure:  When it comes to this blog, I also took August off!

August And Everything After

August has always been a month of mixed feelings for me.

As a youngster, it was always important to me as my birth month.  If fact, I always considered my mid-month birthday as the pinnacle summertime event of my childhood.  Unfortunately, because of its close proximity to the start of a new school year, the immediate aftermath was a huge letdown.  It was like coming off of a sugar high.

As an adult, August is still an important milestone month, because now my wedding anniversary is also included as part of it.  But while the school year has no direct impact on me now, it’s still a negative mental marker of the summer ending, with the daylight hours getting shorter, and the temperature getting colder.

This year, my August attitude has been the same as usual.  There have been many highs in the first half of the month to go along with the birthday / anniversary attention, including family gatherings for weddings, and the always-important Iowa State Fair.  (Not just attending the fair, but once again competing and judging.)

But now here we are at month’s end, with the Labor Day holiday at hand, and the melancholy feeling is taking over.   The more leisurely summer days and evenings are ending, and everything you told yourself you’d wait to do until the Fall is now staring you smack in the face.

One good thing about getting older is, I can at least enjoy the usually beautiful September / October weather.  That wasn’t the case in my younger years, when the hours of helping work on the farm were even longer.  It wasn’t the case in my young adult years, either, because those months typically brought with them a vast array of kids’ school and sports activities.

Farewell, August.  I look forward to seeing you again next year – at least your first 20 or so days.