A Lust for Life at Summer's End

By Daniel Stankus on August 15, 2014

Summer. The word alone evokes mental images of trashy Panama City Beach parties, The Evil Dead-esque trips to secluded cabins, French Riviera cocktail soirees, lounging in the sun with a classic novel accompanied by coffee and cigarettes, road trips to anywhere out west, so on and so on. What did I want to do this summer? Everything.

Obviously, I couldn’t. Between work, conflicting friends’ schedules, time, recovering from a semester abroad and seeing family, it was simply impossible to do everything I wanted to do during my final college summer.

It’s a similar analogy to life – I want everything out of it: love, adventure, happiness… Life clearly affords more time for logistics (i.e. friends getting off the same week, saving money) and accomplishing goals (i.e. climb some mountain, visit Aztec ruins) but the planning is a bummer, just like the fact that I can’t road trip to Mexico and hike the Rockies this summer.

The words “internship” and “marketable skills” and similar ilk get tossed around a lot at this age, which also bums me out. So here I am with this grandiose list of things to have conquered this summer but without the time to have done it and the pressure to have a good income source upon graduation. But I find the drive alone to do it all very refreshing.

I look at my ever-growing to-do list (I won’t call it a bucket list) and I mentally begin the planning process. “Well, if I get an internship my schedule is more likely to align with my friends’ 9-5s.” “If I never eat out, I’ll have much more gas money.” “Maybe we can all take a week off at summer’s end to drive to Colorado.” It’s invigorating. So, along the lines of my past “inspirational” article, I can do more.

Lake houses and old friends

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