Letting go of the pressure to have the best summer ever

Somewhere around late May every year, the pressure to have an amazing summer quietly arrives. It shows up in the posts you start seeing, the plans your friends are making, the vague sense that this particular stretch of time should be meaningful and memorable and full of things worth sharing.

And then it is August and you are not sure it lived up to whatever you were imagining in May.

Here is the thing about that feeling: it is almost universal, it is not your fault, and there is actually a pretty simple way out of it.

the highlight reel problem

Summer is the most documented season. Everyone is outside more, doing more visually interesting things, and therefore posting more.

What you are seeing when you scroll in July is the best ten percent of everyone’s summer — the trip, the beach day, the concert, the rooftop.

You are not seeing the three weekends they spent doing nothing in particular, the plans that fell through, the days that felt long and a little aimless.Your summer is getting compared to everyone else’s highlight reel and your own is getting judged on its average.

That is an unfair comparison and the outcome is always going to be the same disappointed feeling no matter how good your summer actually is.

what makes a summer actually good

Not the number of things you did. Not whether you traveled. Not whether it would look impressive to an outside observer.

The summers people look back on with real warmth are the ones where they felt present, where they had genuine connection with people they care about, where there were at least a handful of moments that felt good in real time and not just in retrospect.

That is a low bar. It is also completely achievable. And it has almost nothing to do with having the right plans or the right location or the right content to show for it.

permission to have a small summer

Some summers are big. Some are quiet. Some are mostly working and saving money.

Some are recovering from a hard year. All of these are legitimate summers.

The pressure to make every one a peak experience is exhausting and also just not realistic across your whole life.

If this is a quiet summer, let it be a quiet summer. Find the good things in it.

A slow morning with coffee.

A night drive with no destination.

A really good book.

A long phone call with someone you miss. Small things that feel genuinely good in the moment are worth more than impressive things that you are doing mainly so the summer feels significant.

the reframe that actually helps

Instead of asking did I have a good summer, ask what were the best moments of this summer. Not the whole thing. Just the moments. You will almost always find more of them than you expected. And stringing together a handful of genuinely good moments is exactly what a summer is supposed to be.

Let the pressure go. Do the things that actually sound good to you. Be where you are.