Comments on: That summer seemed to last forever

By: JEANETTE

JEANETTE — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 23:05:35 +0000

Just a little trivia for you……summer of 69 was apparently not written about the year 1969…Bryan Adam would have been about 9 years old then…..apparently it is about making love in the summertime and 69 is the reference to that (hope you don’t mind me posting this Laura pls delete if inappropriate)

By: john coyle

john coyle — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 17:27:33 +0000

One of the most effective strategies I know for time expansion (and this topic is the subject of a book I’m writing right now) is to design fear and suffering into your vacations. Here’s the reason – we are wired, as human beings, to remember stories. All stories have a plot, and all plots have a crisis. If you don’t have a crisis you don’t have a plot, if you don’t have a plot ,you don’t have a story and hence you won’t remember it!

By: Wendy Rose

Wendy Rose — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 12:00:51 +0000

Just wanted to share some wisdom my grandmother left me with: “The days are long but the years are short.”

I’ve found it to be truer and truer as the years fly by and helps me remember not to be too goal oriented that I keep wishing those days away.

By: Christine

Christine — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 23:55:07 +0000

I appreciate anything that will keep summer from feeling like it just whizzed by (how can it be June 15th already!?!) One of your ideas that I’ve really latched on to is the idea of anchor events – for a weekend, a vacation, a season. My family is fortunate to have both sets of grandparents owning cottages within 2-3 hours of our home. While it makes summers really pleasant, those default weeks or weekends at the cottage tend to make every summer blur into one familiar lump. Adding at least SOMEthing novel en route to the cottage does help make the mini vacations stand out more in our memory.
I’ve also just started trying to do more after- work/daycare outings to fill summer evenings, and just bring a picnic supper along. The main goal was actually to make the evenings go faster (and keep my kids from destroying the house) while my husband is traveling and I’m solo parenting. But the bonus is trying some new playgrounds, making some new memories… maybe the added bonus is our summer weeknights will slow down summer as a whole so it’s not just one eternal Monday night running around our own backyard.

By: lauravanderkam

lauravanderkam — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 20:26:55 +0000

In reply to Caitlin. @Caitlin- mindfulness may be cheesy, but it's also smart! And I agree on leaving space that is not then taken up by screen time. If it takes writing "20 minutes of hammock time" on the to-do list, so be it.

By: lauravanderkam

lauravanderkam — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 20:25:25 +0000

In reply to Jennie Evans. @Jennie Evans - I totally agree on scheduling fun. Not only do you get to look forward to it, which stretches out the happiness, you are more likely to plan memory making events, and vivid memories stand out in the mind and thus stretch the time too.

By: lauravanderkam

lauravanderkam — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 20:23:09 +0000

In reply to Omdg. @Omdg - yup, the unpleasant or tedious can stretch time out a lot. The question is whether it's possible to get some of that, um, spaciousness with the good stuff too.

By: Jennie Evans

Jennie Evans — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 19:46:55 +0000

Because the bulk of my time off during the year is the summer, it seems to fly by. I agree though days we spend frittering away watching tv seems to fly by, but the days spent being out and enjoying ourselves seems to last longer. Strategies I have employed to increase this “slow time” is similar to your summer fun list. Only I do it all year. We have a fall list, winter, and spring. I’m a list maker and while it may seem counterproductive to schedule my fun, it ensures those activities get done instead of … Well frittering away time watching tv.

By: Omdg

Omdg — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 19:27:10 +0000

Doing 30 hour call every fourth night for x years slows things down a lot!

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 18:53:37 +0000

At the risk of sounding super-cheesy (and maybe not entirely helpful) I try to take a deep breath, engage my senses (what good sights, smells, and sounds am I experiencing? etc.), and appreciate whatever it is I get to do at the moment. I sometimes close my eyes and tip my head back for a moment. It pulls me back into the moment and re-centers me. When I look back on vacations where I started doing this, they feel much longer and more relaxing than ones that were the same length of time but where I dreaded the end or tried to cram a lot of activities in (so leaving space is another good way to make time seem more expansive).

This also works for tough situations, too, like the time I got a flat tire and was stuck for quite a while. In a bizarre twist I didn’t have a book on me (I nearly always do) and my phone didn’t have a lot of battery left. I took some deep breaths and appreciated the way the sun filtered through the leaves above me, the fact that it was a warm beautiful day and not the dead of winter, and it was more pleasant than not.