Goodbye Summer sun

Photo by Mark Matson, for Austin American-Statesman

I looked up from my computer screen and summer was over. This makes me sad every year because even though we spent lots of weekends at Schlitterbahn and I even went tubing for the first time in years (with Glark and his nephew on the Colorado River), I always react with shock when it gets to be September and I realize I didn’t spend as much time as I wanted in water, on a beach (we didn’t go to any beach at all this year) or doing other outdoorsy stuff.

It’s happened every year since we moved to New Braunfels in late 2004. I always imagine the summer will involve me working from home every day and typing from next to the water at Landa Park and taking afternoon dips in the Comal and then spending my evenings at Schlitterbahn. It never quite works out that way for myriad reasons.

I’ve noticed that I tend to be a lot busier at my day job in the summer. Maybe it’s because lots of other people go on vacations and we’re often short-staffed in these months or maybe I just work better under harsh sunlight. But it’s when I tend to do a lot more stories for the front page and when I came back roaring after my annual post-SXSW Interactive exhaustion.

I did a column for this week’s Tech Monday about an upcoming Clean Energy Venture Summit and in yesterday’s paper was a pretty length piece about Fantastic Arcade, a new indie video game festival in Austin spinning off from the very famous Fantastic Fest for films.

Haven’t done NPR lately and the CNN articles I did early in the summer are the only ones I’ve worked on. Yet the despite of extracurricular work, it feels like I’m busier than ever and at night, after the girls are in bed, I just slump on the couch with exhaustion, unable to get myself to the computer to do my own blogging or to update other sites or do much of anything but trying to catch up with the overfull DVR or to try to avoid snacking into the wee hours.

Speaking of the girls, Carolina is now crawling and seems much more adventurous and prone to grab things and put them in her mouth than her older sister did. Lilly turned 3 last month and is taking a dance class at her daycare that she loves.

I’m trying to get my energy level back up so I can think about what I want to do next, especially if we stop doing Trailers Without Pity, like I mentioned in the last blog post. Pablo and I really want to start doing our comic again, but even that is a time commitment that might be difficult for us to coordinate. He’s got his own set of projects he’s working on (like doing recaps of Undercovers for TWOP) and his own social life to keep up with.

If it sounds like I’m bitching about being tired and having no time, I’m really not. I’m thrilled that things are busy at work (as opposed to being boring), my daughters are happy and healthy, and I’ve actually had time over the summer to read books, catch up on TV shows I’d been meaning to watch and to do things like take walks outside every evening and pay my bills, which is always nice.

I just wish summer had lasted a little longer and that I’d gotten myself into deep pools of water a little more often.