I No Longer Feel Guilty for Having a Quiet Summer

Summer is supposed to be energetic. Society expects early wake-ups, trips to the sea or mountain hikes, hundreds of photos. If you don’t do that, people get surprised: aren’t you tired, don’t you want to rest? I am tired. So much. It’s just that what most people consider rest makes you even more exhausted.

Summer demands you to be active. It gets light early, dark late, fruit and berries are everywhere, vitamin D produces itself. You’re supposed to feel fresh and joyful. C’mon, you can’t lose a single minute! A day off is not for lazing in bed; it’s for traveling, discovering new places, hiking, kayaking, cycling ─ in short, doing everything to get yourself thoroughly worn out by autumn. Everyone says so: social media, bloggers, friends, colleagues, total strangers.

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Many years ago, when I still worked in an office, I was chatting with a colleague. It was an intense period ─ three weeks of 12‑hour shifts without weekends to finish all projects before the holiday season. The long‑awaited June weekend was ahead. My colleague told me she was planning a mini‑trip for the whole two days: leave at four in the morning on Saturday, return at midnight from Sunday to Monday, and be back at work in the morning. I nervously finished my coffee and felt internal panic. I tried that situation on myself and it scared me. My dream was to switch off my phone, sleep through one day, and spend the other on my hobby. I made the mistake of saying that when she asked about my plans. “You’re crazy, nobody does that, you can’t spend the whole weekend at home, especially in this weather! You’re definitely not normal!” she cried out. Ironically, three minutes earlier I had thought roughly the same about her plans.

Not much has changed since then. The moment you mention that you plan to spend the weekend on the balcony overlooking the forest, sipping prosecco and reading a book, people twirl a finger at their temple. Like, what a weirdo. It doesn’t work like that for me.

Physiology vs. Summer

First, I have no energy in summer. I’ve already grown tired over the first five or six months of the year and I want to rest. The heat drains me. The long sunny day is no gift either. My body reacts sharply to sunlight. Yes, winter is hard because it’s constantly dark (especially in Scandinavia), you always want to sleep, waking up is a struggle. But summer brings just as many problems. I can’t fall asleep until the sun sets. Blackout curtains in the bedroom are a good solution, of course. But I need them in the whole apartment. And in the morning ─ right now the sun rises at four, which means my biorhythms demand the whole organism to wake up. So in summer, when it seems you can finally rest and there’s no heavy workload, my body wears itself out from lack of sleep.

Have you ever been so tired ─ mentally and physically ─ that every cell ached, yet you couldn’t fall asleep because of sheer exhaustion? Stretch that feeling over the entire 92 days of summer. It doesn’t matter if you worked your fingers to the bone or just stayed at home. On a cloudy day you simply feel tired and irritable, but you still have the energy and desire to make yourself herbal tea, wrap up in a blanket and pick up a book. In summer heat ─ it’s fatigue, irritability, apathy, and absolutely no desire for tea, blanket, or reading.

Second, food. I love eating, I adore delicious food. But in the heat my body refuses to accept and digest many things. My ideal summer diet is yogurt and fruit, maybe granola. I’ve tried adjusting my nutrition, but my body intuitively demands low‑calorie food, which then leaves me weak and depleted. Try lasting on that for three months while sleep‑deprived ─ yeah, right.

Sensory Storm: When the World Gets Too Loud

Third, I really struggle with places packed with people. All tourist spots are off‑limits ─ sensory overload hits in 3, 2, 1…

Somehow it happened that in mid‑July I found myself on holiday in Italy, in Venice. A beautiful city, every tourist’s dream. But it was 38°C in the shade, it had just rained, and the air was hot and humid. All around ─ crowds of people who don’t speak, they shout to hear each other in the throng. We spent fifteen minutes jostling in a queue just to get out of an alley onto a wider street. After an hour of this walk, neither the canals, nor the architecture, nor the gelato brought me any joy. My head started pounding; we bought water, found a more‑or‑less shady lane, and sat down on a bench. But a few minutes later we left, because the chirping of cicadas is not the best cure for a headache. I wondered: was I the only one not enjoying this? Everyone else on the streets of Venice looked perfectly content, taking photos in front of every wall. Some with genuine enthusiasm, others because “well, we’re on holiday, if we don’t take a family photo by every flowerbed and every lamppost, no one will believe we’ve been to Venice itself!” All I wanted was to get my feet as far away from this madhouse as possible.

The same applies to public transport in summer. Hot, noisy, full of smells, sounds, bright colors ─ a concentrate of migraine triggers, isn’t it? You could, of course, go to the forest. But there are too many people there too. And in our region ─ also lots of ticks. Lyme disease is not in my plans, thank you.

Redefining Summer’s Purpose: Save, Don’t Spend

Fourth, what matters to me in summer is not to use up the last of my strength and stamina, but on the contrary ─ to accumulate them, so that autumn and the pre‑Christmas period can be productive enough and I can make it through to the Christmas holidays. That means doing what fills me with energy, not what drains it.

This summer I’ve set aside writing, reading, and embroidery. These are the things that help me disconnect both from work and from routine; they don’t take energy away, but rather help “recharge the battery”. The ideal scenario ─ sitting on the balcony with a glass of lemonade, reading or embroidering, occasionally glancing at the summer forest. That’s definitely better than sweltering in forty‑degree heat under the Louvre or roasting on a beach.

Fifth, a calmer period at work gives me time to think through new ideas and plans ─ something there was no time for in spring and won’t be in autumn.

I Simply Gave Myself Permission to Rest ‘Not Like Everyone Else’

For a long time I felt somehow defective because I didn’t buy into all this summer hustle and experienced real discomfort from it. I tried to be like everyone else. But as years go by, the desire to do what I want ─ not what is forced on me ─ grows stronger.

The turning point came after yet another “summer like everyone else.” My colleagues came back to the office full of energy. I needed two weeks just to somehow ease back into the workflow, and already by September 10th I was desperately waiting for the Christmas holidays, hoping to spend them with a book on the sofa. I realized: “like everyone else” doesn’t suit me. Should I really rest in a way that requires yet another recovery period afterwards? Probably not. Rest is a time to accumulate energy, not to spend it. So, what the hell?

Image created by author using AI

Now I am confident that I have the right to spend summer the way that is comfortable for me ─ not the way dictated by photos on social media. Perhaps that’s true freedom: to stop being a hostage to the ideal summer image and finally start listening to yourself.

Is your summer about “doing it all” or “finally hearing yourself”?