I needn’t be buried under a mountain of snow to realize that summer is a long, long ways away. I feel it now, sitting here on a fall day where the temperatures will be cold relative to what they once were, but warm compared to what they soon will be. On one cold hand, it feels like it was just yesterday that I was plying the waters, with the sun beating down on me, navigating the waves, bouncing over them while being immersed in a summer afternoon. On the other hand, that scene feels like such a distant memory, like one from my childhood that I can remember in parts but not in its entirety, recognizing brief snippets of the times and piecing those together with things that may or may not have actually happened. I sit here now, thinking about these things, and I am filled with regret.
It wasn’t so long ago that I lived a summer without a single regret. The summer of 2012 was a lost summer for me, as my time was stolen by a house sale and another house purchase, a move and a rental and the gyrations of those necessary life events. The summer was lost, but it was far from unproductive. The summer before, the summer of 2011, now that was a summer. I wrote a fragmented article on the fact that I was living that summer without a single regret. When the sun was warm, I basked under it. When the wind blew, I sailed. When the fishing boat had gas in it, I fished. I did everything right that summer, and I ended the summer at once exhausted and invigorated. I had tired myself out while searching for the perfect summer, and I was content.
This most recent summer featured distractions. Chief among those was a new house that I rather enjoyed spending time in. I also had a work schedule that was more arduous than I’ve had prior, and while I’m incredibly blessed to represent some of the smartest, most discerning buyers and sellers in our market, sales this year, while totaling many, did not come as easily as they might have come in prior years. On sunny evenings of prior years, my mind may have focused intently on finding my way to my boat and onto those waters, while on sunny evenings from this year my mind found cause to wander, and those evenings more often than not found me on the seat of a tractor, or on the cushion of a couch shamefully facing a television. My summer passed me by quickly, and I regret to inform you that I spent it unwisely.
It isn’t easy to know that at the time. On a summer evening, if I spent it tilling a patch of dried, rocky dirt so that my wife may theoretically plant that patch with flowers next year, this wasn’t a wasted evening. At the time it felt productive. On the same note, if I spent an evening cooking another pizza in my newly built pizza oven, and I entertained friends on a newly laid patio, this felt, at the time, to be an entirely acceptable way of passing time. In hindsight, while the company might have been pleasant, the patio was boring and the pizza wasn’t nearly as good as I made it out to be. Curse that pizza oven, for many reasons, but mostly because it kept me tethered to it too many nights, and I have only realized now that it isn’t a good idea for someone with a metabolism that ceased working approximately 8 years ago to consume pizza after pizza. After pizza.
I had sporting events to attend, too. But instead of dutifully attending a baseball game, enduring moments when my son repeatedly watched meatball pitches enter the catcher’s glove before even thinking about swinging, and then flocking to the water for a refreshing dip or a sunset boat cruise, I shamefully watched the game and went home. Home to my house that I love, to the property that I love, all the while ignoring the lake that means far more to me. Because I was lazy on those nights, and because it is obvious to me now that I was ill-prepared for summer, I am forced to sit here in shame, overflowing with regret, fully aware that my next shot at redemption is more than seven months away. This is my hell.
If this is my level of regret, I can only imagine yours. If you have a vacation home here and ignored it all too many nights or afternoons or sunny weekends when a Friday night commitment kept you in the city for the entire weekend, your shame is likely similar to mine, even if you don’t allow yourself to wallow in it like I do mine. Worse yet, if you are a serial vacation home watcher, those content to spend large segments of your life in the theoretical pursuit of a some-day-vacation-home, I can only imagine your regret. Another summer lost, spent doing everything and anything except the one thing you’d really like to be doing. Weekends spent in a city setting are fine, and possibly even enjoyable every great once in a while, but a weekend spent in the pursuit of activity cannot compare to the active pursuit of weekend leisure.
Thankfully for all of us, we have time now to regroup. We have time to consider our sins, to repent, and to wait for our next chance at summery salvation. If we are to be prepared, we must start now. If we have a Lake Geneva getaway, we must focus on making it part of our weekend routine, whether it is summer or fall or winter. If we do not have a home, we must set about remedying that most unfortunate situation. I’m ready to help, and with some commitment to the cause, we can all work to live next summer without regret.