August

This happens every year. August 1st rolls around and immediately I think, "Jesus christ. The summer is almost over! How did it go so fast?" When, in reality, there is a whole month left (7 weeks if you want to get technical). That seems like a lot of time. But when you break it down, it's really not.

If you have a typical job, you work Monday through Friday. That eliminates five days and nights of the week right there in which you could go to the beach, go to a bbq, get drunk at the bar, etc. Now, I understand that some people have no problem going out during the week, myself included. That's all fine and good, but try getting a decent amount of your friends who are working and contributing to society to go out on a Tuesday night and get drunk. Not easy.

Now, that leaves 2 days (Saturday, Sunday) and 2.5 nights (Friday, Saturday, sometimes a Thursday) to go all out and do what you want. So between now and Labor Day (the de facto end of summer) there are exactly 11 days and 15 nights to have real uninhibited fun without having to worry about work the next day (or at least not worry about it too much because Fridays are usually an easy day). That may seem like a decent amount....until you consider the fact that there are 34 days and 34 night between now and Labor Day. That's 26 out of 68, or 38% of the summer.

Anyway, my point is that this happens EVERY summer. You kick things off with a long Memorial Day weekend. You're at a bbq or a party with your friends. You're all drinking and having a good time and talking about how great the upcoming summer is going to be. Then time proceeds to fly by at superfast speed. You go to the beach a few times, go out every weekend, go to a few parties, see a lot of people, maybe go away for a week or two. Then we arrive at today, August 1st, and you wonder where all the time went.

What usually comes next is thinking of all the things you wanted to do this summer but didn't get around to yet. People you wanted to see, places you wanted to go, things you wanted to do. You try and plan things for the few upcoming weekends that are left. But by this point, most of them (at least the Saturdays) are booked up. So then you get upset and angry about the summer being too short and you kick your girlfriend's cat in the ribs a few times because you enjoy beating up defenseless animals that are much smaller than you. It's an annual ritual.

I wish I had some sort of solution to this problem, but I don't. You just gotta cope with it because you can't slow time down. Get out there and enjoy yourself. Because the older you get, the less summers you have to take advantage of. That, along with the fact that you generally become less and less impulsive as you age really makes for a dire situation. I remember the first summer after college graduation. It was insane. I went out with friends EVERY SINGLE Tuesday night for Beat the Clock night at Bar A and got absolutely hammered on 50 cent beers. I didn't even care about having to go to work the next morning. And that was my first real job out of college. I was, in the words of Champ Kind, "All about havin fun." It was glorious. The best summer of my life.

But now, I have big things to worry about called responsibilities. The main one being a mortgage. And that pretty much confines my partying to weekends. And there are only a few of them left this summer. I guess I'll just do my best to take advantage of them.