A Brief History of Epic Summer Plans

My garden. Yeah right, kid.

It seems like every summer in living memory, I get the bright idea to do something. And not just do something, but really DO something. The summer between my fourth and fifth grade years, I decided to grow a garden behind my house. This was not just going to be any garden, though. This was going to be the motherload of all gardens; a garden to rival those of the Queen herself. Unfortunately, not only did I have no idea how to go about growing anything, the plot I was allotted for my project was about 90% rock and 10% dust. Seriously. It was a desert. My parents didn't want me to ruin their yard with my feeble attempts at gardening (something that, in hindsight, was probably a very good idea on their part) so I was banished to what we affectionately termed the "Moonscape." The Moonscape was the sad section of Earth between our yard and the backhoes and rock piles of the new neighborhood being built behind our house, and it is probably, after the Sahara, the worst place to attempt to grow anything unless you are related to Demeter herself. Needless to say, the garden never existed, much less produced a harvest. As an eight-year-old kid, I couldn't even figure out how to get seeds, much less plant them and actually remember to water them more than twice. And so the Moonscape remained a barren wasteland of dust and crushed gardening dreams.

The silver medalist. Not me.

A few summers ago, my big plan was to become the best rock climber of my generation. I had my harness and my chalk bag all ready to go, and the day before the last day of school my friend called me and asked if I wanted to go to the rock gym. As a future gold-medalist climber, I said yes. I was sort of joke-bouldering on a really easy wall, finished the climb, and instead of just letting go and free-falling to the mat like usual I decided to be more cautious. I thought to myself, Self, the last day of school is tomorrow. You don't want to get hurt before summer, do you? So I climbed halfway down the wall, jumped off, and proceeded to sprain my ankle. As my crutches and I sat around for the next month, I pondered what went wrong. I wasn't being stupid; bouldering walls are very low and are climbed without ropes, so the only real ways to get down are to climb or jump. Oftentimes, jumping is safer than climbing because of the predicaments one can get into while climbing down a complicated wall. I had always jumped, as did almost everyone in the gym. I had a mat underneath me like always, so nothing was different than any other day at the gym. I got hurt because I was trying so hard NOT to get hurt.



Alas, not me.

I have concluded, with much reflection, that the universe has decided that my epic summer plans, for whatever reason, are not going to ever come to fruition. However, that has not stopped me from trying, every single year, to DO something. Two years ago, I decided that I would start a book blog for the primary motivation to get free books from publishers. After a fervent week of posting, my blog slowly died, my drive squashed by the monotony of writing about the same thing every day. Last year, my friend and I decided to learn how to cook, a recipe a week, all summer. We proceeded to... completely forget about this plan.

So this brings me (finally) to the (entirely long-winded) point: this summer, I'm not going to be overly ambitious. I am merely going to attempt to blog. About what, you may ask? Whatever I feel like. I don't want to be limited in terms of subject matter or weekly "requirements." I'm just going to talk about my life, my thoughts, my opinions, and maybe my dreams. Who knows, I could actually accomplish this year's Epic (although not actually epic) Summer Plan. (And yes, capitalization is entirely necessary.)

Wish me luck!