Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

leisure time

Slow Summer Living

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Summer is meant to for slowness. Savor it and get outside. #summer #powerslow

Remember those long summers from childhood? My family spent lots of weekends camping each summer – going on hikes, reading paperbacks in the shade, wading in streams, taking afternoon naps, and telling stories around the campfire. Back at home, my sister and I rode our bikes all over town, walked to the swimming pool most afternoons, made mud pies, captured bugs in jars, read dozens of books, and just played.

Recently I stumbled upon journalist Kelly Wilkinson’s blog Make Grow Gather. She’s on a mission to relive one of those slow, lazy summers from childhood.

This summer, I am attempting an experiment. An experiment to take back summer. Like when I was a kid and thought everyday could be warm and empty and mine.

She made a summer to-do list. Here are a few of my favorite things on it:

Walk barefoot • Take a nap outside • Make suntea • Pick berries • Spend time in hammock • Go on picnic • Make herb water • Hang birdfeeder • Grow vegetables • Go to a farmer’s market • Read the Sunday papers outside • Learn a summer constellation • Go camping •  Read a summer book • Pick wildflowers • Blow a dandelion • Watch fireflies • Make lemonade • Watch a meteor shower • Eat a watermelon • Take a walk on a dirt road

In our house, summer is an opportunity for me to work and write a little bit more, since my husband is home more to watch our son. And that works out great, because after so many months of tearful morning goodbyes and refrains of “Dada gonna be home soon?”, they’re both pretty excited to spend more one-on-one time together. But Wilkinson’s inspired me also to make old-fashioned summer laziness a priority in the next two months.

So I’m planning to spend lots of time here…

and here…

and in our other favorite escapes, and to just really enjoy these long days with my family. So I’ll probably be posting a little bit less during the next two months. But hopefully you’ll be too busy catching fireflies, picking berries, blowing dandelions, and gazing at stars to notice.

Days of Rest

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Last week my son and I spent a couple of nice, leisurely days at the Oregon Coast with my mom and sister, who were visiting from out of town. I’m always amazing by how recharging even a short time away from work, emails, phone calls, and social networking can be.

In the last few months, I’ve started powering down every Sunday – leaving the computer, email, and phone off and hanging out with my family. Sometimes we go on a hike, go swimming, or walk to the park. Sometimes we hang out at home and linger over breakfast, read the newspaper, and work in the backyard. I usually take a nap with my son in the afternoon or read a novel.

At first taking a day off just felt strange. Between taking care of my son and the house and working on this blog and my writing business, I’m used to toiling nearly every waking moment. Sundays just felt entirely non-productive, even wasteful. But as the weeks pass, I find myself looking forward to my family’s slow, quiet, non-electronic Sundays.

Moreover, I’m realizing that a day of rest is actually productive. It gives me time to think and reflect, which are necessary elements to the writing life. And I don’t find myself wasting time, procrastinating, or avoiding work as much on the other days of the week, because I know I’ll get a chance to rest and recharge on Sunday.

Many have long understood the importance of a weekly day of rest. Followers of Judaism observe Shabbat from sundown on Friday until Saturday night. They are freed from the regular daily labor, can spend time with family, and can contemplate the spiritual aspects of life. Traditionally Jewish people also observed a Shemitah Year every seventh year, when they left the fields fallow to give the land and society time to rest. All debts were also canceled during that year, so they could begin anew again.

Many Christians observe a day of rest on Sunday. Some Muslims take a day or half day of rest on Friday. And there’s a new movement growing called Secular Sabbath. Marc Bittman wrote about it in the New York Times a couple of years ago, when he came to terms with his addiction to being plugged in. He discovered what I and probably many others have in our always-on society – forcing yourself to unplug can be surprisingly difficult:

I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.

Like me, Bittman eventually adjusted and came to look forward to his days off:

Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

Do you take a day of rest each week? How do you spend it?

Is boredom good for us?

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In an essay in the New York Times Book Review, Jennifer Schuessler argues that boredom is an “important source of creativity, well-being and our very sense of self.”

She points to research indicating that when we’re stuck in a boring situation, like lying in an M.R.I machine, certain areas of our brains register greater activity than when we’re engaged in basic tasks. Which areas? The ones responsible for “autobiographical memory, imagining the thoughts and feelings of others, and conjuring hypothetical events” – the same parts you’d use to read or write a story.

These days most of us seem to want to avoid boredom at all costs. We carry around an arsenal of hand-held gadgets to distract ourselves. Our cellular phones alone have cameras, music players, hundreds of “apps”, and constant Internet access. Our culture tends to celebrate busy-ness and minimize the importance of vacations. And many of us fill the leisure time we have with television. In 2008, the average American watched over five hours a day.

But in our quest to eradicate boredom from our lives, could we be throwing away other things too, like our ability to imagine and be creative?

What do you think? Is boredom good for us?