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Summer sun and hours spent gazing at trees drenched in golden hues upon a verdant canvas.
I listen to the hum of life growing and bustling beneath, above and around, mingled with the occasional tinkling of an ice-cream truck winding through the neighborhood- a pied piper of sticky sweets and piggy-banks.
Summer is also a time in which I look with lazy acuity at the progress of my life and vow to do any number of marvelous and ridiculous things:
I will publish a fabulous book and become a widely celebrated author...
I will finish a dazzling array of paintings and host my first brilliant art show...
I will travel the world in a gypsy caravan festooned with brightly colored tapestries...
I will go to Peru and study local textile production...
I will become an activist for world peace and environmental conservation...
I will meditate twice daily and soon attain a nirvana state of unending peace, through which I will nourish humankind...
I will become a fabulous runner...
I will be a yoga instructor with astounding bendability...
I will age backwards...
I will get my masters degree...
I will.... You get the picture.
All these daunting hopes and expectations often leave my spirit sagging beneath them, culminating in an existential crisis that Kafka would be proud of.
In the end I simply shake it off.
I smile.
I look at my son and I say, "Today I will do my best".
After all that is the most I can ever do, that and watch my yard fill with a snowy layer of cottonwood while I twirl my one-year old in a dirvish joy dance across the summer sun.

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