As I pen this article, it isn’t yet technically summer. We know summer starts and ends as she wishes. She’ll give you an approximately arrival time and keep you on your toes consistently being early or late. Timeliness is over-rated. She lights up a room and leaves.

Summer is a precious commodity on this northern edge of the planet. It seems halfway gone before we really sink our toes into it. It does initially seem that the “Music Box Dancer” ice cream bells will go on forever, but they’re an illusion to lull us into the complacency that allows us to tolerate a continuing eight-hour work day.

I remember school-free, younger summers. The consciousness of joy as shades of sunshine lingered before me toward a distant autumn sky. The summer stretch. Freedom and imagination were interwoven through those months.

I’ve been without a job for a few months. Financially, it has been challenging but so rewarding in gained perspective. I didn’t realize how much of my attention was placed in reaction to my professional environment and away from my internal environment. I’ve spend a lot of time not understanding how I’ve felt. Is there a better season to slow down in and rest and reflect?

Do we busy ourselves to prevent this? Culturally, we have some limiting practices to self-understanding. We tend to adopt corporate or workplace values into our private landscapes instead of bringing our unique viewpoint to the office. Such uniformity is subversively demanded to avoid conflict or confrontations or, worse, hearing something that we don’t want to hear. Corporate branding has told us to just do it. Then, we did it, and didn’t stop to contemplate the value of that action. We rarely think beyond the next quarter or subsequent purchase.

Do I regret taking a hiatus from the workplace? Not at all. Alberta’s corporate mindset is evolving at it’s own pace – a pace that is not synchronic with mine at the moment. We’ve been made to understand through the encroachment of technology and the inevitable economic struggle, that it will just take a moment to answer that email or text and a moment of our blossoming season isn’t too much to spare. Those moments add up to personal well-being and fulfillment. We have none too much of that and there isn’t a second to do without. I can’t remember the last time I went shopping for a cloud. The season is too short to articulate.

Keri lives in Boyle Street in the summer and throughout the year.