What I Learned | Summer 2024

Jonathan Edward Durham recently tweeted: “There is a word in ancient Greek (Kakotherēs) that means ‘bad at summer’ or ‘unfit for summer’ and it pleases me to know that this has been going on for thousands of years, for I, too, am bad at summer.”

I felt this quote deeply in my soul. I can’t say I’ll miss summer this year. It’s been hellish hot and humid all season and I. Am. Over. It.

Frank and I have been making a list of places where we might like to build our forever home and retire, and I can attest that most of them are in the northern part of the US. The others aren’t even IN this county, but none have average summer temperatures that verge on bathwater territory. Can you tell I’m thankful summer is unofficially ending? School supply season (or autumn, for you non-stationery fans) may now commence!

Here’s what I learned this season.

I need community.

My life is pretty isolated by design — autism, introversion, and chronic illness with a compromised immune system all make in-person connection challenging, so I’ve always gravitated to online groups to find the community I long for. Throughout the 2010s, I was involved in many Facebook blogging groups that served as a place to meet with others. Most of those groups waned as the years have gone by and I’m still connected with some of the friends I made there, but for the most part, my friend circle has dwindled to the point of hearing crickets chirping.

To put a cherry on top, I started pulling away from social media platforms earlier this year. I am no longer on Facebook or Twitter and have been guarding my time on Instagram since taking four months off this spring. I have my reasons for doing this, many of the exact ones in this post by Erin Loechner, because she writes about it more eloquently than I ever could, but I’ve realized that no time I spend on these platforms is serving me in any way, and I want my life back.

But that doesn’t help in my challenge of finding a new circle of friends, of people with whom I share interests and hobbies. The last few years since the pandemic have been particularly lonely, so I was determined to find a new outlet that would also give me the accountability and motivation to sit my butt at my desk and write, and I found it! The Shut Up & Write platform was completely new to me, but I’ve joined the most welcoming groups and have connected with writers from near and far. I participate in a group or two that I join each workday and every person I’ve met has been so kind and warm. It’s not the reciprocal type of group I was used to in the blogosphere, and that’s nice. I like people who want to be supportive just because and not because they are getting something from the interaction.

A good night’s sleep is a new, quality pillow.

I’ve been particular about pillows for most of my life. They can’t be too firm or too fluffy. I don’t care for down-filled pillows but the synthetic fillers wear strangely over time. My method in the past was to stack pillows — buy several and build a pillow hill under my head when I sleep. It can’t be a coincidence that I’ve had neck and back problems for years.

This summer, I’d had enough of the flimsy pillows with their stuffing separated and clumped in weird ways, so Frank and I went shopping for new ones and learned that gel pillows exist. Wow, talk about a difference! This model has gel memory foam and is cooling when you sleep. It feels amazing and eliminates the need for a stack of pillows under my head. I’ve been sleeping better at night, something this insomniac has always struggled with, and I don’t wake up with neck pain.

Healing sometimes comes from chaos.

Liane Moriarty’s book Nine Perfect Strangers was recently made into an eight-episode miniseries and I’ve already watched it three times. If you’re unfamiliar with the plot, it’s about nine people who gather at an exclusive retreat for “healing and relaxation.” They each carry with them baggage full of emotional difficulties. The leader of the retreat, played by the lovely Nicole Kidman, has a few unconventional methods to help her guests get into their feelings and work through their issues, and chaos ensues.

There’s something about this story that draws me to it. I normally hate chaos, but watching it all unfold was cathartic and highlighted some of my issues that could be dealt with. Some of the themes that ran through this story were things I needed to learn so I could start healing from past trauma, and I’m now on that path.

Compassion fatigue can be overwhelming.

As a person with autism, one of the things I’ve always struggled with is my empathy level. Sometimes I can be too empathetic, to the point of carrying someone else’s burden on my shoulders, even if they don’t need or ask me to. It can be incredibly draining on my system when I’m struggling with this and it's been a challenge to learn when it’s okay to let myself feel sadness and grief and when I need to pull back. It’s one of the reasons I left social media earlier this year. With there being a lot of tragedies in the world from war, genocide, global warming, and political divide, everyone was running to social platforms to share the latest story.

If it wasn’t about the awful situations in Gaza or Ukraine, it was on the animal front — dogs, cats, and barnyard animals coming from unthinkable cruelty and neglect who were desperately needing fosters and adoptions so they could be safe. The requests I saw daily were in the dozens, if not more, and it was so hard to look at those faces and scroll away.

I’ve written previously about the little rescue project I have going on at home, feeding the 20+ stray cats in my neighborhood. Most of them are feral and look out for themselves, but I’ve seen some younger felines that don’t have the street smarts needed to survive. Some of them have been injured, many of them are malnourished, and I can’t look out my window every day and not do something to help. Feral cats have an average lifespan of two to five years, much shorter than the 12 to 18 years of an indoor, domestic cat.

I love all of the animals I care for. They all have names (some even respond to them,) and I watch out for them. I’ve seen some stick around for a year or more, while regulars I had early on have disappeared. I don’t know what’s happened to them, but I don’t have high hopes. I just keep pushing forward by taking care of those who come today. This is the compassion I need to be present with, and while I still hold empathy for those suffering in the world around me, I have to pull back from the situations I can’t change, to protect my mental health.