Summer is over (and that's a good thing)

The summer this year was an ongoing repeatment of sunshine, hot weather and hardly any rain. It lasted months, this torture of nature. For me, it came with a decent amount of Blues. I never thought I would experience a summer depression, but I did. I do have a tendency to be melancholic, it seems one of the talents that came along with creativity and an eye for beauty. It struck me that this characteristic took over from the positive ones, while I was walking around in shorts (at the most) taking cooling down showers outside under the antique Portuguese bucket. You would think that life was a joy, that it was as it was supposed to be when The Netherlands were said goodbye. However, I couldn’t see it for a while, that Portuguese dream of living on a hill in this rural vicinity. When I saw beautiful flowers bloom, the only thing I could think of was that they were in the wrong place and grew much too big.

For the first time, I experienced physical complaints as a result of not knowing where to go or what to do, even worse, not even know where to start. The result, in the end, is that I found myself not answering phone calls, avoiding any contact with the outside world except for the odd remark on social media. It’s so easy to pretend everything is going well when you can hide the facts with funny remarks and thumbs-up’s. Lately, I’m more aware that there might be sad stories behind all these “look where we went out to for dinner” and smiling selfies with a glass of wine at some fancy bar. Just the fact that I have a dog to take care of, might have been the reason I didn’t just keep laying in bed. I found myself taking photos with my phone, of me and the dog, and sharing them on Facebook or Instagram as a token of being alive and out there. As making “How to, DIY and recycling” videos is one of the activities that support the Portuguese dream, something in the back of my mind told me to keep visible on social media, although I made only a few contributions to my “Not just sawdust” Youtube channel.

It’s getting colder, the afternoons are getting shorter and we just stacked-up 2 tons of firewood. Being melancholic is valid again thanks to brown leaves and a smoking chimney. But “we” seems to be a cure for most of the dark voices that discourage me to tackle reality. She’s back and that makes all the difference. A few decades ago I used to be that stubborn individual, chasing success, waving away all problems with creative solutions and just denied hearing the haunting voices that wanted me to face the childhood encounters with “situations” which in those days were on top of the list of subjects one didn’t talk about. Losing that individual stubbornness when becoming just one half of a whole is a good thing. It made my life so much more pleasant, secret thoughts were shared, old “issues” were banned to the world of darkness and the gate was barricaded with true love. Last summer I experienced the downside, I am just half, maybe even less. I need the other half to function, to not be thrown back to the dark side because that individual from way back past the point of being able to be rebooted.

Summer is over, for me, for the first time I’m living thru the seasons, it’s a positive thought. It took a few days to connect all the little wires that were cut off for 3 months, but it was a simple procedure and a very enlightening awareness that the ends had no signs of corrosion whatsoever. I’m back as that melancholic partner, with all those side effects as creativity and an eye for beauty. The workshop floor is covered in sawdust again, new projects are on their way to completion and I even found the courage to take on one of my former jobs and started the restoration of an antique painting. I’m talking to the camera again and accept what I see when I’m editing the footage in my little studio. I am confronted with myself, a weekly video seems to have so much more impact than an occasional photo, but the way I look depends on whether I’m functioning as a whole. To have a clear view, to exploit my creativity and skills, to understand the meaning of life as such and to keep my mind out of the shadow, I need my other half. I do understand some others now. “Just get on with it”, seems one of the most hurtful remarks you can make to those who are lost within themselves. It’s an important lesson learned, no matter how convenient some solutions may look, they won’t work if we’re not one and complete.