My Beige Summer

Many have categorized this summer as—weird, out of the ordinary, passing by too quickly, or just plain bad. Fret not, it can actually work in our favor.

Summer is a notoriously challenging season for writing. Is it just me? I have to look outside my window and see gloom, rather than glee, to steady myself enough to put some sensible words on paper. Writing blossoms well in irritation, sadness, and hurt. Summer usually brings happiness and excitement, and those feelings rarely initiate reflection or self-analysis. I prefer to fully indulge in the food, wine, beach, and boating; emboss the feeling, and write about it in September.

This summer was not that kind of summer.

This summer felt unlike any other, didn't it? I'm sure you noticed it too. As I heard people around me categorize their summers—weird, out of the ordinary, passing by too quickly, or just plain bad—I couldn't help but think that this collective sentiment hinted at a shift in our lives, a change for the better.

I felt it, somewhere around May. I had a feeling this year will be different, and should be approached accordingly. Differently.

I thrive on my European summers. It's more than just reuniting with family and friends; every year it reconnects me with a Mediterranean lifestyle I was raised in—a lifestyle I yearn for more and more, as I tally my 23rd year of living in the United States. I like where I come from—a little slice of Split, nestled in Dalmatia, along the Mediterranean, where people are like no other, in looks or demeanor. I like our collective flair for drama and how simultaneously artistic and athletic we are. I like how famously annoyed we are with everyone who fails to grasp our way of life. I like our religious approach to prepping food, our precise timelines for lunch, a dip in the sea, or a post-lunch siesta. I like the cynicism that pervades every aspect of our existence. I take pride in our genetic makeup, the olive skin that never seems to burn, and this unruly hair I've inherited from my mother.

My summers in Europe are not a vacation, they are a lifeline. I’m so serious about it, in fact, I broke up with someone due to his constant American-style nonsense, banging - “How on Earth can someone spend three months in Europe”, puzzled and offended by someone being able to spend that much time in a different country. Also, a third strike, him telling a mutual friend who recently got married in the South of France, excited about all the amazing food catered at his wedding, remarking no such food can be found in the US - “Yes, but America is 50 times the size of France.”

Getting reminded of who I am and where I come from is my lifeline. But, something switched in me this year. I felt I was constantly on this rollercoaster of seeking the excitement that creates a certain noise, preventing me from actually hearing myself. It’s almost as if I felt I needed to evict the summer joys from my life in order to stabilize my life. Summers have high expectations, and this year, I wasn’t ready for it.

I needed a summer for me. Empty. Silent. The type of summer I can’t get in Europe. I needed to not be altered or expected to do anything. I needed a break from being readily available to others who expect my presence, as it often turns into me becoming a soundboard for their frustrations. Not needing my help but using my life to feel better about things they rather not solve.

I also wanted to avoid thoughts of packing, endless shopping for the things I don’t really need, long flights, jet lag, and the emotionally charged few months that my parents regularly bestow upon me.

A guy told me when I was 16 - “Miranda, sometimes you achieve more by absence”. I thought he was God back then and I imprinted everything he ever said to me, only to find devastation some 20 years later, when we reunited and I discovered a befuddled underachiever inspired all my life mantra. I do need to give him credit for this line, miraculously, he hit one winner.

I also felt I didn’t deserve my summer this year. I had a late start into a professional year (due to extending my last year’s European summer far longer than it needed to last), and I fell far short of the goals I had set for myself by the time this summer rolled in. Therfore, I felt I didn’t deserve any joys usually brought by summer. I thought to myself - “You will travel when you deserve it”.

Summers in Europe can be tricky, the magic of it screws with your mind; you meet someone, you think it’s more than it is, you change your plane ticket repeatedly and end up mentally altered by something that ends up being a time-consuming detour that takes months to undo, restoring yourself to your default settings.

This year, I didn’t have the time for it. And I didn’t want to be fodder for all those unhappy souls on borrowed time, waiting for someone to parachute into their stale lives to give them the appearance of options and change they don’t actually want.

More often than not, we're stuck in a never-ending loop, especially in the summer, fearing we might miss out, pressured to believe we must constantly seek some great experiences, share them on Instagram, and be a part of everything. It pushes us into certain situations, often not in our best interest, making us believe this is what, or this is who will fulfill us. We end up living on borrowed time, fueled by our imaginations, playing pretend with people who aren't right for us.  And then, we spend weeks, months, and sometimes years undoing the choices we've made.

I blame summer!

And you ain’t fooling me this year.

Jokes aside, we do it all year round, but I feel that summer is fertile ground to trick you into thinking and feeling something that is not. Summer has high expectations. Summer is dangerous. And I didn’t have the energy for it this year.

I felt the only winning move was not to play.

My incredible European summers usually come with a high price. I pay dearly for it, come September. All my Septembers are usually very stressful. The post-summer time when I stayed somewhere for too long jeopardized the stability of my regular life. When we’re not stable enough, we get altered by places, situations, people. Not being where you want to be in life isn’t a very good ground for starting something. This September that came along after I evicted the temporary joys from my life - was one of the best I had in a very long time.

My American summer was fulfilling in other ways. I call it my Beige Summer. It’s great to be excited and altered, but sometimes it’s also great to just be beige. To enjoy things while having peace of mind. Excitement over something or someone is what we live for, but the downside of something or someone not working out as we imagined or wanted - is soul-crushing. It’s hard. It’s painful.

This year, I’m just not in the mood for pain.

My summer in New York was beige, but it was peaceful; I love East Coast beaches more than I care for California, and if you had seen both, rather than base your assumptions on movies you’ve seen where they zoom in on those palms, you would understand this sentiment. I went to the beach by myself, bought some gourmet food on the way, ate it at the beach, read the books I never had the time for, and talked to the wide range of people I found interesting on my way back and forth. I went to the Bob Moses concert at 3 am, to hear one song, by myself; no one wanted to go, and I didn’t care or felt the need to be a slave to other people’s schedules. I killed myself in the gym 2 hours a day and I actually enjoyed it, without looking and keeping track of my progress. I looked at myself in the mirror one day and saw that body I wanted and felt I could lift 100 pounds - I felt power. I felt mental and physical power just from taking a step back from my regular path while enjoying small, beige things that made me stable and focused.

When I decided to stay in New York for the summer, puzzling my family and friends in the process, I prepared myself for Instagram stories of everyone I know and their mother, dog, and parrot swimming in the Adriatic, on boats, posting all the amazing food, sunset, and beaches - I was prepared for it as a boxer prepares for a fight. There will be punches! I’ll endure!

Surprisingly, there wasn’t.

I don’t know what happened to us this summer, but I feel like we matured into something we can be proud of. Yes, I heard the sentiments left and right - “My summer passed way too quickly”, or “This summer was so shit, what was that”, but think about this, we finally got sick and tired of performing for social media. We don’t want to feel like broadcasters creating content no one is paying us for, and we are finally enjoying life more than we’re posting about it. Instagram made its own deathbed by screwing with algorithms that took us from having an online space to hang out, to a platform for strangers and lurkers. No one is really engaging, liking their friend’s posts or commenting, all we’re really doing is using DM’s as a hybrid of an email and chat.

I don’t know about you, but my beige summer was great as a result of this altered mindset. I didn’t care to post anything, I posted 4-5 beach pics all summer, I enjoyed my time rather than thinking to let everyone know about my experiences. You did it too. Everyone I know put a break on posting their every step, every bite.

Instagram lost relevance, and in the words of The Atlantic -

“Its decline is about not just a loss of relevance, but a capitulation to a new era of “performance” media, in which we create online primarily to reach people we don’t know instead of the people we do.”

We are no longer performing. We are living. We are having shitty, beige summers, and we are not mad about it. We are listening and learning instead of constantly seeking, trying, and spinning in circles. We're trading unforgettable summers for stability, honing our focus, and aligning more with ourselves—the reward must follow.

Mine did.

I’m not alone in my concept about summers being the perfect time to silence and face ourselves. This is what Hailey Nahman wrote last summer on her popular Maybe Baby Substack - 

“It’s also about facing myself. Unlike winter, when I can blame everything on the elements, summer inverts those conditions, leaving me with nobody to blame but myself. The enemy comes indoors.”

I've had an exceptional September so far. Everything I envisioned has unfolded—every wish fullfilled, every event attended. I found myself questioning, how is this even possible? I've managed to pull some pretty unthinkable things. And I’m convinced sacrificing my European summer rewarded me. 

But that’s a story for another article.

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