Slow summer: Savouring the busy season

In the words of Ben Howard’s Old Pine, still one of my favourite songs ever, it’s the boom of summertime—blazingly hot days, bright bright sun, sticky heat. It’s the time of year for voracious growing in the garden, for screaming cannonballs into the lake, for loud humid nights in the backyard. And it’s busy: nature, especially in these northern climes, is scrambling to push out as much green as it can, and we humans follow with vacations and travel and festivals and markets and get-togethers. Here in Canada, where the long winter dark blankets us for so much of the year, we are desperate for these short, bright months.

And it is so very easy to get caught up in that, to rush our way from engagement to engagement all summer, to worry about all the shoulds and musts, to get so concerned with taking advantage of the season that it’s gone in the blink of an eye.

However, that hurried speed to do and see and accomplish is antithetical to the slowness that I’m trying to cultivate in my own life, and I think I’m not the only one who finds it so stressful. Which is why, as I try to find my way to a slower life, I’m being extra intentional at this time of year. Here’s how.

Leaning into routines

I’ve always done best when I have a routine to my days. While diversity is obviously important in a fulfilling life, having routines as a framework for my day helps ground me in the moment and in my space.

There’s a lot of talk about routines online—TikTok seems to be especially obsessed with them, with a slew of GRWMs and 5-9 vlogs and Sunday resets showing perfected, highly-optimised routines for every girl to aspire to. But they’re a lot, often overly stylised for mass consumption. And that’s fine, as long as viewers recognise it’s okay if their own life doesn’t look like that (and I’m afraid a lot of viewers, especially young women trying to find their own ways, don’t—but that’s a different conversation).

But real routines don’t need to be fancy or complicated. My summer mornings, for example, all look pretty similar: I wake up and shower (morning showers 4 lyfe), I have oatmeal for breakfast, I make my iced latte. One or two times a week I hike first, but still fall back to those same steps when I get home.

The slow start to the day that this routine affords me means I can ease into the busyness of the summer season feeling well-prepared. And while this routine shifts a bit on weekends—a shared coffee in the garden with my husband, a bigger breakfast together—a quiet morning sets the stage for a day packed with work or fun.

Staggering commitments

Summer is the season of commitments: weddings, barbecues, drinks with friends, cottages, family get-togethers…the list goes on. And spending time with friends and family can be such an uplifting experience. But for lots of us—introverted homebodies like me, for example—it can be emotionally draining at the same time. On top of that, my husband travels a lot for work, so quiet weekends at home are treasured.

It’s been a learning experience for us to understand how to stagger our re-energising time at home with our desire to visit with loved ones. When we build out our schedule, we always try to leave one weekend at home in between weekends spent away. And while that’s easy in theory, it can be tough in practice—we’ve had to get good at setting boundaries, and it’s still a learning process.

Taking advantage of the season

There’s no hiding from the boom of summertime, and really, why would you want to? Diving into the adventures that summer presents has been the best way to slow down and actually enjoy the season—as long as it’s in line with my boundaries.

The small town that we live in is full of festivals and markets and events every summer, which is such a wonderful way for us to celebrate the season without ignoring our need for rest. And that’s the key: investing your energy where you can, and treating your down time as sacrosanct. So while I’ll go to bed early tonight, I went to the local brewery with my dad yesterday, and will probably stay up way too late at an outdoor concert in town this weekend.

Where you invest your time is an incredibly personal decision. But I’ve found that learning when to rest has let me lean much more into the draining-but-fulfilling stuff that makes summer so damn great. And these lessons aren’t just for this season: busyness comes in waves, as we all know, so understanding your own energy and learning to set boundaries sets you up to tackle them, no matter what time of year it is.