This summer, like several summers in recent memory, didn’t turn out as brilliant or wonderful as I’d originally intended and hoped. Maybe it’s about expectations that were simply too great, maybe it’s the final convulsions of a lengthy mid-life crisis (or crises as the case likely might be) or maybe it’s just the state of the world and the dumbing down of people. The Solid Gold Summer recap arrives tomorrow, so I won’t get into a link-heavy diatribe in this post – this is more of a contemplative rumination on the previous three months, and how something that was designed to be solid and gold ended up being hollow and tarnished.
This is the third themed summer we’ve tried on the blog – starting with ‘Coquette‘ in 2024 and then ‘Island‘ in 2025. I like organizing blog posts around a certain structural element such as a theme because it focuses the season, honing in on something that can symbolize whatever else might be going on in the world. (See also the ‘Autumn of Oud‘ or ‘Winter Obscura‘ or the ‘Fade-To-Black Fall‘. The upcoming autumn has a major theme that will be announced on the first day of fall, and it marks a new era, a new image, a new look – and somehow it peels back decades of who I thought I was into someone entirely new and yet intrinsically more myself than ever. That’s more than just a neat hat trick – it’s an astounding revelation/realization.
Back to this past summer, which proved revelatory in a different and more somber way. Largely happening in my head, the Solid Gold Summer found me pulling back from social gatherings (when you find yourself without anywhere to go or anything to do, it means you’re the only one doing any of the social lifting) and happier for it, but then realized I was inhabiting my mind instead of living in the moment or the outside world – phoning it in, quite literally as I spent time on the stupid device in my hand instead of what was happening all around me. Living in one’s head and phone is not a happy place to be – none of that is even real. So the first half of the summer was in living that lie – the second half was getting over it and readjusting. To the latter’s end, I began reaching out to the friends and family who would be there in person – setting up dinners and get-togethers and weekend with the twins who are old enough to operate on their own. I’ll be looking to broaden my social scene in Boston this fall as I begin the long road to retirement (you cannot get the long-range planning gene out of me) and reconnect with some friends I haven’t seen in a while.
Now that I’ve written this all out, I’m seeing that this summer hasn’t been a total bust – that it was solid after all, that it did have its golden moments, and everything that’s meant to be will always be. Huh. A realization in real time, documented as it was happening. A nearly perfect ending to a summer that felt anything but…
