It’s summer in Portland. It’s Portland.

It is summer in PORTLAND!

It’s the best time of year to be in Portland. Summer officially starts on July 5th in Portland, the rest of the country has already enjoyed sometimes a month or two of warm weather and sun. In Portland, summer starts slow and almost never gets unbearable, maybe a few days in August or September are too hot for us pasty white Pacific Northwesterners, but mostly it’s perfect and PERFECT.

Summer makes it a challenge to focus on anything, even writing, which is a place where it’s easy for me to focus. Everything slows down and speeds up all at the same time. I want to be out in it, doing, soaking up the sun and at the same time want to be relaxing in the sun. Calm and energetic all at once.

Eating summer meals, drinking summer drinks, sitting on the front stoop of our house – people watching, exercising, bike riding. Summer is here and I’m not going to let it derail me forever, but I’m not writing as much. I do think about writing, at almost every turn I have a thought, an idea, a glimmer of what’s to come through the pen and I jot it down or think on it as I ride my bike around in summer sun, but I’m not quite writing as much as I’d like.

If my biggest complaint is that I write less in Summer, I’m going to stop thinking it’s wrong and be thankful for it.

Reading is easier in summer, light all day, enough to read, reminds me of summer book clubs when I was young. Maybe I need to get used to the seasons and get more in touch with how my writing changes in those seasons.

Maybe my writing and life in general comes in waves with the seasons. I’m not going to keep fighting it. I’m going to trust it.

Spring – rising light, new and full of energy – spring into action (when I edit and push forward new ideas)

Summer – sun, hope and growth of ideas – the dog days of summer (when I calm down and settle into reading and fun)

Fall – gray light, turning inward and melancholy – harvest (when I think and think and prepare and writing begins again)

Winter – reflection, dark and broody – the winter of discontent (when I write most)

It’s summer, it’s exactly as it should be – TIME TO GET OUT IN IT. There is time enough for everything – there always is.