July 2024 is ending in just one day.
Every year around this time, I start feeling a bit uneasy, a little down, uncomfortable…all those not quite bad, but not great emotions.
Maybe it’s the looming reality of Labor Day or the nagging reminder that I have “only” one month left to finish the summer projects I ambitiously planned back in May.
This summer, my project list was long and varied:
- Decluttering our home garage
- Organizing/editing the bookshelves of old books and magazines in my office
- Family trip to Seoul, Korea in May
- Organizing photos from the Seoul trip
- Increasing the view numbers of this blog
- Moving my business website hosting/domain/tech-related services to a different company
- Planning summer weekend outings to different parts of Toronto
Other than the website tech issues and weekly trips, every other project has been started but remains in the dreaded “in-progress” stage. In other words, they are NOT finished.
At the end of April, fresh off finishing my semester of teaching, I had a slew of plans for the upcoming summer. The biggest one was the two-week Seoul Trip I’d been planning for a few years.
Reflecting on that trip, it was a solid success: seeing all the relatives, trying various Korean restaurants we’d planned, and ensuring a leisurely pace due to mom’s leg condition. It was a pretty good trip, if I say so myself.
Another notable achievement was becoming the tech support person for managing my company website.
After setting up the website services through a tech support person years ago, I did nothing for years. Year after year, I made the “easiest” decision: do nothing! But as the service quality dwindled and the prices increased, I realized the provider banked on my laziness.
This summer, I decided to change that.
For many, this might not seem like a “project,” but for someone like me, it was a significant project.
I lacked the technical skills and initially hesitated—should I be tackling something I have no experience with? What if I mess it up and create even bigger problems? Maybe it’s better to leave things as they are?
But with having a summer with a lighter workload, I convinced myself to learn something new. I started by migrating my emails to a new provider. After sending many emails and receiving “the process is easy and smooth” responses, I finally hit the TRANSFER button.
Spoiler: the process was not smooth.
I endured a few days of email interruptions and many “why did I do this?” moments. However, after speaking with various tech support folks at the new provider, I managed to fix the issues myself!
With my newfound tech skills (?), I began working on migrating the domain/hosting services.
The work is ongoing, and I still have moments of “what have I done?” but knowing I’ll “eventually” find solutions, like with the email services, I’m getting more comfortable with the idea of becoming a tech person.
So here I am, with a few summer projects still unfinished or not even started, feeling the pressure of the ticking clock.
Should I celebrate the completion of two significant projects—the memorable family Seoul Trip and becoming a quasi-tech support person—or should I stress about what’s left to do?
What have you been up to this summer? Are you feeling the same looming Labor Day blue?
Life Outside of Design Studio 