Dear Summer Days, (Letter Series)

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Letters.

Dear Summer Days, (Letter Series)

If you click on Letters under categories of past blogs, you’ll see the whole series. This series is a nod to the idea of letter writing, which I love with a burning nostalgia that makes me long for the days of slow communication, letters written by candlelight. Well, until I remember they didn’t have mobile phones or the Internet…

Happy Monday to you. Happy new writing week! Enjoy this new installment in my Letters series.

Dear Summer Days,

You trick me every time. The way I can walk across town reading a book under your forget-me-not sky and then forget the day of the week entirely. They way you inspire nostalgia, what have I got to lose, and might as well live.

I can remember a time when summer really did last what seemed like forever. Long enough to get bored and grow out of my favorite shoes. Long enough for a love affair to begin and end.

When I became a teacher I imagined I would get these summers back. Don’t laugh–it’s an easy trap to fall into. While it may be true you can’t repeat the past, is there any harm in trying? Summer days, you are for wandering, for wonder, for making art, for learning ten ways to tie a scarf and more ways to say, yes, I do.

Looking forward to your impending visit,

Liz

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

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lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.