I guess there's some sort of healing power imbued into Summer.
If you've been following my website for a while, you would know how much I love Summer. While I do talk about the constant aspect of 75F+ (22C+ for those who are smarter than us Americans), beautiful sunny days, more outdoor oppurtunities, there's something else about it: A momentary return to monotony and constance.
Every year in mid-May, my schedule returns to a 40-hour-a-week basis, 9-5 every day, in or out of office. I can work from home whenever or come to the office whenever, no set guidelines. I've been working in one of those "people-centric" offices for over a year now, the ones that allow you to work from home or come into the office without the need for your boss's discretion, go for long walks in the middle of your shift, those kinds of things. While yes, I absolutely do take advantage of working from home whenever I feel like it, most of the time I try to come into the office to bring some structure to my workflow.
The work I do revolves around geographic information and dataset management, boring nerd stuff. No overt deadlines, just many many meetings and stuff. I like occupying myself with this degree-related busywork in the Summer and Some of Winter, as I have not much time to do it during college.
Now, some of you may hear this and think to yourself, "Office work? 9-5? And you enjoy doing that shit?" And yeah, I can understand it sounds a little crazy, but you gotta understand a few aspects of this mentality:
9-5 can kind of suck, especially if you miss a nice day out, but I'll take financial security and a guarantee I'll get paid for my day of work. I'll be honest, in the days I worked my supermarket job only on weekends, free weekdays kind of sucked. Everyone's freetime only existed weekends. Going to work straight 5 days in a row brings this sense of mental monotony, it kind of calms the mind down knowing that all work I need to will finish at 5 sharp and I can come home or close my laptop and focus on myself. No homework, no late night studying, just work when I need to work.
Now, like I mentioned before, I do frequently work from home. It's nice to wake up and clock right in. Coming to the office is nice too, and I have always been a fan of the hybrid model. I don't think I want to get into my liking for occasional office work without sounding like a pro-work-from-office shill.
Boring jobstuff aside, taking a step away from college is always a fantastic thing no matter what. Yes, even the social aspect. In fact, I argue the social aspect of college is just as bad as the academic aspect.
So, here I sit, working on this website more and more, picking away at the pages I forgot existed. I have one show from all the way back in April that I haven't published the photos from yet, which will be worked on soon. Of course, I also just went to one last night. That will come later. There's a hiking page in the misc section that I haven't touched in a year, so expect that to finally be live in the coming weeks. I've been hiking again finally! Except the weather just started getting shitty in late June. almost 100F tomorrow. Eugh. Thankfully I crammed some outdoor activities in May and early June.