Today is unquestionably beautiful: the summers in the Pacific Northwest are glorious. It’s 9:30 AM, 68°F, relatively low humidity, and sunset is at 8:56PM tonight. I mention that because summer is light and warmth. Now I love a good, Gothic, gloomy rainy day next to the vampiric girl, but I can appreciate summer, too.

I’ve used Mary Oliver’s line from this poem as a personal tagline for over a decade: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Well, I am not sure now. It’s still one, still wild, but I don’t know what to tell. And I think I need to just settle on “show.” Just –do. Create. Breathe. This infinite hyper-vigilance is not how I want to spend my one wild and precious. Do I, or rather can I, allow myself one day to look away? I have been thinking this is the part of the dystopian/apocalyptic novel no one talks about — the precursor, the backstory, and the prologue. But then Stephen Colbert’s guest, Kamau Bell, among many other brilliant things, said “Didn’t Mad Max say, hey, gas prices sure are high!” before the actual Mad Max story. (paraphrased). That’s exactly how I feel. I don’t want to waste time, anymore so than I did yesterday or tomorrow. But yet here I am. It is a summer’s day, and I am greedy. I want my summer’s day, and I am squandering the light and time.

So, a reminder: it’s okay to take a break during the summer. It’s also okay to play. Do some curriculum planning. Plant some daisies. Tell my family I love them. Make a will. Up my life insurance. Draw some doodles. And just enjoy this one life.