Making Summer A Season For A Different Kind Of Creative Life
Summers have a special place in my creative life. For me, it’s a time with more freedom and space for creating. I use them to focus on work I struggle to make room for during the rest of the year.
But not all have summers like mine. When I surveyed creatives about how they find creating throughout the different seasons, summer was the season with the biggest variations. It was clear that it’s the season that is most affected by our differing lifestyles - whether we have kids or not, if we live further north or south, how much we travel.
Let’s look at how summer tends to affect us in our creative lives, and what we can learn from it to make the best of this season ahead.
A different way of living
Even though our summers vary widely, there’s one thing we have in common: summer isn’t like the rest of the year. It’s a time when our regular routines get shook up, when our days look a little different and we get to try a different way of living.
Those with kids have them home more, many have their long vacations from jobs, we travel, spend more time outdoors and garden enthusiasts have their hands in the soil.
In the online creative world, many take breaks from writing newsletters, engagement on social media changes and it’s often a season with less business activity. To me, everything seems a little lighter and easier, not as serious as the rest of the year.
The memory of school summer holidays make this season one where we crave freedom and time away from our regular lives. We hit pause on things we usually do, we care less about things we usually care about. I don’t know about you, but for me it seems a season when we cut ourselves some long overdue slack.
All of this, of course, affects our creative work. It might mean we take time off doing it, or if it’s usually a small part of lives, that we do it more. But regardless, it’s different. And the best we can do is to embrace that.
For those with less time and energy
A little simplified, there are two groups of summer creatives - those with more time and energy and those with less of it. If you belong to the latter group, you’re likely pulled away from your creative work by social activities, travel, or kids. Or your might live further south in the world, where the weather is so warm that it affects energy levels. This means summer isn’t a good season to make things happen in your creative life however much you may want to - rather the opposite.
The best thing we can do is to embrace our summers as they are. If you’re in the group with less time and energy for creative work, maybe let it be a season to take a mental break from creating. It can be the perfect opportunity to step out of your creative bubble and come back in late August with new experiences, ideas and perspectives. Whenever I take a break from my creative work, it rewards me with new insights and levels of understanding that propel me forward.
Or, if you do want to create but it’s hard to find the time, choose something smaller and specific to focus on, something that fits well with the rhythm of your summer. Perhaps something you can easily dip in and out of, or that has less pressure.
For those with more time and energy
The other group has summer like mine - we have more time, perhaps more energy and more freedom to live as we want, and that might mean creating. We often live a little further north so the heat is manageable and we don’t have small kids.
If you belong to the group with more time than usual, time that you’d like to spend on making creative ideas happen, I’ll encourage you embrace that. Don’t just keep going as usual, devote this season to something a little different. Summer can be a beautiful time to sink deep into our creative work and get to focus on things we’re usually pulled away from. Ideas we haven’t yet gotten around to.
The problem in this case can be the feeling of having too much time. When the days stretch out ahead of you like an ocean, it can be hard to begin. Routines are off and the lack of structure puts more pressure on your own ability to get started.
Having the time to actually make ideas happen can surface fears of what happens if you really try. If you fail - or if you succeed. It can make our inner critics pipe up and want to put us back in the safe box of dreaming rather than doing.
If these feelings come, let them. But they are in the end just feelings, they’re telling you what you’re scared of, not the truth, and you can move through them. Choose a creative focus for your summer and take one small step after another.
Don’t forget to rest
Summer is for most of us also a time for rest. It’s a time in the year to destress and wind down, which is so very important in our fast paced world. So don’t pile on so much creative work that you miss out on that space to rest. If you have vacation from a day job, don’t just exchange it for creative work. Be kind to yourself and choose a pace that feels good and that gives you room to just be.
Then, when summer draws to a close, we can arrive back to our regular lives well-rested, with new ideas and experiences, ready to move forward again.
Save this blog post on Pinterest
