Summer has always been a relatively unique experience throughout the course of my life, and will continue to be so as long as I remain in the teaching profession.
When I was a kid my summers were generally very boring, being that my family was not the most wealthy, causing most of my activities to be left to the imagination and done at home (This was before the heyday of the Internet, which could have easily entertained me for hours on end back then). As a direct result, I had to teach myself mechanisms in which to easily eradicate boredom. In middle school, this meant devoting hours upon hours to watching whatever was on television at the time. In high school this entailed creating small websites (including geocities back when it existed), working at the OC fair selling newspapers, and eventually working at my dream job at Popeyes dropping lots of chicken onto the floor and serving it to customers.
My workaholic spirits continued onto college, as I worked all 4 summers I was at UCSD. Though some jobs were obviously better than others, and I now had more obvious social interactions to take advantage of, my favorite summer was in 2011 where I worked at a summer camp that really got me interested in teaching altogether. I could say that was the summer that ultimately changed my life, but even I’ll admit that sounds rather hyperbolic, especially since the summer of 2009 was when I discovered Phil’s BBQ.
After college, I spent four summers working at Fairmont Summer Programs, which as funny as many of the interactions with elementary school children ended up being, was superseded by the joy that came with interacting with good people all striving for different results in life.
I finally decided not to work at all in the summer of 2017, where I thoroughly enjoyed taking a trip to different parts of Europe and making many new friends along the way. That gave me a nice breather after 3 long years of teaching.
That brings us to this summer, the summer of 2018, in which if people ever asked me what I ultimately did, my answer would be nothing. Outside of working AX for a week, and helping with data entry and new student enrollment at RKMS for 2 weeks, the rest of the 30 odd ish days off entailed doing lots of nothing. Fortunately, after watching the new Christopher Robin movie, I am actually quite content with the fact that I did effectively nothing.
A wise bear once said “Doing nothing often leads to the very best kind of something.” Whereas I see so many people taking advantage of their summers in creative ways, whether it involves hitchhiking to the tip of South America, traveling new places, discovering new foods, making new babies, or whatnot – I actually appreciated the intrinsic value of “doing nothing” and wasn’t really that bored with my free time this summer.
Although, in the process of “doing nothing”, and kind of just going with the flow, I was actually content with the accomplishments I ended up achieving over the summer, which included the following:
- Running and training. Throughout the entire course of the year, I have transitioned myself into the position where I can now run 8 miles at a single time. I now have specific running paths in both Garden Grove and Alhambra that I can trigger at any-time if need be. If I can work my way up to 13, I’ll be ready for a half marathon in no time.
- I caused Moviepass to almost die. Not singlehandedly of course, but being that I’m a “power user” and was able to watch 45 movies for the cost of 80 dollars, I have definitely made my money’s worth. This summer was no exception, except for the fact that at some point Moviepass changed it’s business structures to restrict me from watching movies. This will not work though, and I will make sure to continue taking advantage of the system so long as they remain in operation.
- Every time I meet up with someone who I haven’t seen in a while I get the atypical question “So, are you seeing anyone?”, to which I can now answer no, and be okay with it. After all the research I’ve done anyway on the topic, marriage doesn’t necessarily make you happier. In fact, this infographic I created below shows the real hierarchy of happiness.
That’s assuming you’re in a happy marriage though, but if you’re not the celibate life is the best thing you can do for yourself in the long run. Kids often add another equation into the mix as well. For all you single people out there, you’re still at 2nd place on the pyramid, but still first place in my heart.
- So many boba runs. I feel like there are small black balls in every trace of my body now, as I have consumed a lifetime’s supply of boba in just one summer.
- Staying loyal to family. It’s still the small things that I try not to miss out. Coming from a big family, these includes birthdays as they come up. I hope as I get older and busier I never choose to turn my back on my family, as annoying and invasive as they can be from time to time.
- Binging television shows and podcasts from The Handmaid’s Tale, My Hero Academia, to my new favorite podcast – “My Favorite Murder”, a comedic take on the murder mystery genre.
- Rekindling old friendships. This is a key one I think that is often overlooked by many people. I value relationships more than I do activities, meaning that I really do like someone I can end up doing anything with them. I never would have thought I would have kept in touch with so many people from high school, but as our life paths diverge, we always end up meeting back at the same place at the end of the day. From the simple act of going back to our high school and middle school yearbooks and reliving old memories, I have realized it’s not really about WHAT you do in life that nearly matters as much as WHO you do in life (not sexually). True friendships out-last the seven year rule.
- Four Visits to Phil’s BBQ. Sure, it’s not that many, but my continued efforts to expose more and more people to my favorite place in the world will hopefully solidify my friendships with them.
- Creating new friendships. At the same time, I’ll always be open to the idea of the reality that there are cooler people out there than the people I already know. Which is why I’m still in charge of my Alhambra Meetup group, which I hope to actually fully implement events for this year. Just this year alone, I have met many wonderful people through Anime Expo, and hope to make new memories with them soon in the future.
With that said, my summer is effectively dead. Unlike my soul though, I will continue to strive to make the rest of 2018 a magical experience for myself and all those around me.
