...And the Livin's Easy

It's four in the morning; this is not a problem. I'm typing this on my house PC. I just came back from a run, I went shirtless. I'm following the it's-not-tomorrow-until-I-go-to-sleep rule in posting this now. My close friends are at my fingertips, and my family a shout away. It is positively summertime.

So here we are, back where it all began. Classic Brian is nearing its one-year anniversary, and as someone who has put a hefty bit o' work into this thing (approximately a post's work more than Sunday Robert), to me I kind of think of CB's birth as the mark of a changed era. When I look through my slow-glass mirror to see myself a year ago, I see someone of a completely different mindset; feeling undisciplined, but not quite free. I see someone who had yet to recognize life itself as authority and proclaimed himself untamed. I see someone ogling, wishing the mirror would show the future and not the present. Summer 2010 changed that reflection. It created an over-the-hill sentimentality in me that I didn't think I would find. It left me more equipped but less ready for the future, and it left me coming off a high that I still fear I'll never be able to replicate.

Yet here we are, stepping up to the plate for at-bat No. 2. After a couple practice hacks, I've come to realize I'm swinging a different bat. That is to say, things are different now than they were a year ago. This year there's going to be no Robert. Not to gush, but I can't put into words (and I'm a WRITER! lol!) how much that sucks. He's not the only one of my friends who I'm going to have to learn to be without. For instance, Old Conor. It's just weird, how throughout the year there was the desire to "get back" to summer. Well I'm back, but it's different from how I left it, and I'm just going to have to be okay with that.

We rolled into last summer riding a wave of graduation festivities and caught between an ending and a beginning, at a point where there was truly nothing to lose. Here we come in staggered, waiting for all the troops to come home, wishing they wouldn't go to summer school so you could retain them for a while, wishing that Conor would've come to Robert's cookout so we could take another Classic Brian picture before the opportunity was lost pretty much forever. Also we're in the middle of college. We came from it, we're going back, there's four years to be had there too, and did we not just learn our lesson to make the most of them?

But I can't shove Summer 2011 off a cliff. First off, we're in Illinois and that would be far from practical, given the landscape. Secondly, it's different, man. Like that second child who has maybe a 6% genetic difference from the one before it; you can't raise it the same way as you did the last one. Summers, much like kids, cannot be crafted on an assembly line. You have to take into consideration your circumstances. I've voiced this thought before, I'll voice it again: I want to do big stuff. I want to travel a bit. I want to be in new situations. I want to get close to some people, and catch up with others that I've strayed from (Side note: the term "people" as used in the current sentence may or may not also include Final Fantasy characters).

I don't really think there's a wrong way to live out your summer, unless you decide to see how many children of family friends you can get away with murdering or something like that. As long as you make your time worthwhile and remember to make each day count for something, you can accept the fact that it's not as great as last year. Maybe this summer will be for you, hell, maybe it will be for me. But it's here, so take it by its brain and make it do your bidding. Summer comes, passes, and is passed in the blink of an eye, and when it's gone it isn't there anymore. If you wanna make stupid decisions, now is the time. Growing up sucks, but fortunately it's summer, and you aren't graded on acting your age.

--Eliot Sill