The Summer Peril

This is a dangerous time of year for me.  The long summer vacation stretches on, a couple of months have passed since the panic of submitting my final assignment and still weeks to go until classes start for the new semester.  Work is easy, there's no need to squeeze study time into my spare moments, I even have time and energy to return to hobbies long abandoned.  I begin to forget what juggling work and study is like.

And that's when it strikes - the urge to take on more.  It's when volunteering to serve on a committee seems perfectly manageable, when offering to take on another big project at work seems like a good idea.  I think about starting a new hobby, or maybe an evening class.  I speculate about travelling.  I say yes when people ask for my help.  Yesterday I even caught myself reading with interest a poster seeking volunteers to work with the Samaritans.

Every year it's the same.  I forget that in a month or two I'll be drowning under the weight of work and study, and that every extra responsibility I take on now will just drag me further under.  They say that women must be biologically programmed to forget the pain of childbirth, otherwise nobody would want to have more than one child.  Sometimes I think my amnesia somehow got miswired into forgetting the pain of writing essays.

Each year as I struggle towards the end of semester I vow that never again will I take on too much.  Next year I'll limit my responsibilities.  I won't volunteer for anything.  I'll turn down interesting opportunities.  I'll just stick to the basics of work and study.  And then summer comes, and the pressure eases off, and I forget.

But not this year!  I'm sticking to my resolution.  I've only taken on one major new responsibility at work, and picked up a new hobby, and agreed to serve on a couple of committees, and ... oh yeah, and started writing a blog.  Summer strikes again.


Is the quiet of summer a danger for you?  How do you handle it?  Let me know in the comments.