Summer Break…

My boys have only one day of school left before embarking on their annual summer breaks.   Ah… summer break… remember those?  I sure do.

One of the completely crappy things about growing up (one of, I assure you, many) is the the loss of the summer break.  I mean sure, kids need a break to let their minds reset, to spend some time outdoors, and to just be a kid.  But seriously, do we think that adults don’t need the same kind of break?  And a week of vacation here and a long weekend there just don’t stinking cut it.

I never feel refreshed and ready to tackle the monotony of the work-a-day world after a typical adult vacation.  In fact, the last day or two of any break I take from work (including most weekends) is usually spent dreading the fact that I have to return to work in a day or two.  Weekends consist of two parts for me:

1. Saturday, the day or relaxation.
2. Sunday, the day of dreading Monday.

As sick of I was of school by the time summer break rolled around in May, I never felt the dread in August (when school started again) that I feel after a week off from work.  In fact, I always looked forward to the challenges of the coming school year.

I know that I have written of this before, but I really should have been a teacher.  It’s pretty amazing how 20/20 that stinking hindsight can be, isn’t it?  I like kids.  Most kids respond well to me.  Teaching young people skills that will help them be successful in life (… yes, skills they will need to get crappy jobs of their own 🙁 …) seems like it would be a fulfilling way to spend a day.  In the craphandle of Nebraska, teaching is one of the best paying gigs around for an average schmuck like me.  And… summers off!

According to wiseGEEK, only about 2% of the population in the US takes advantage of a career in teaching.  I guess it probably does (or should) take a certain temperament and personality to be a successful teacher, but it seems like there would be more of us who wouldn’t want to give up our summers off.  Of course, many people are probably like I was when I went for my post-high school education.  I had it stuck in my head that I could make more money with a business degree than I could a teaching degree.  I was an idiot.  I was an idiot not only because I have not been able to make more money in the stupid business world than I could have teaching.  I was an idiot thinking that making a lot of money (which I have not been able to do) is somehow more important than doing something that doesn’t make me want to gouge my brains out every day.

Marketing guru Seth Godin, in a blog post today (“Dancing on the edge of finished”), writes about the uber-busy society of today.  His post struck home with me.  In the glory of days past, there was a time when we could actually complete something and call it done.  According to Seth, in today’s world, there really is no “done”.  Seth refers to it as “the dance,” this constant go-go-go that is life today.

Seth writes:

“Facing a sea of infinity, it’s easy to despair, sure that you will never reach dry land, never have the sense of accomplishment of saying, ‘I’m done.’ ”

Oh how I agree with that!  It is very discouraging to feel like each new accomplishment doesn’t really get you closer to an end goal but is only another tick-mark on a checklist that never ends.

Seth, in his always-optimistic way, follows with:

“At the same time, to be finished, done, complete–this is a bit like being dead. The silence and the feeling that maybe that’s all.”

NOOOO, Seth Godin!  It is nothing like being dead!  Well, not that I have accomplished a lot of goals, so I really don’t know… but it can’t be like being dead!  Being dead is like being dead, and actually accomplishing a goal to the point of completion would (in my fantasies of actually making that happen) have to be one of the most satisfying things ever!  Don’t spin the lack of ever finishing to be something good!  It’s not!  In fact, never being able to actually to say “It is done” makes life seem an awful lot like a grind.  If life is nothing more than a daily grind, where is the joy?  Of course, Seth has an answer to that:

“It’s a dance, not an endless grind.”

Great… a dance… and me with my two stinking left feet.

See, teachers get to finish.  When the final bell sounds at the end of the school year, they are done.  Whether good or bad, happy or sad, when those kids leave the school for the summer, the teacher’s job is complete.  Whether the teacher can look back on the last nine or ten months of effort and be satisfied with the results is often dependent on the efforts that teacher made over the previous period of time, but it is done.  And, in August (barring a near-total failure on the part of the teacher), a fresh start is guaranteed.  The teacher can learn from the mistakes and victories of the past and carry what was learned forward into the next year.  Each year is a goal completed.  Each year has a resolution.  Each year is followed by a summer break… BONUS!

In the world of endless tasks to be completed, to avoid the “grind”, I can only conclude that you have to be doing something you absolutely love in order to make the toil more resemble a “dance.”  Settling for a grind and trying to make that grind somehow resemble a dance just doesn’t work — not if you want your efforts to seem like they have some sort of meaning.

Or, if for nothing more than a sense of closure on a previous period of time, maybe we all need a summer break every year…