Sicily and the Wisdom of Others
As summer settles in, I dream of hot days abroad and serendipitously stumble across an advice column that I didn't know I needed to read.
Summer is officially here and things have barely begun to heat up here in the PNW, which is a bit of a relief. Only three years ago we hit 116 degrees in the city of Portland and the effects to the ecosystems here were pretty devastating. This year has been strangely (mercifully?) cool and wet. When we went camping at the beginning of this month, the nights in the mountains still dipped to the low 40s and there was a day up there that was uncomfortably cool.Now though, with the passing of the summer solstice, the warmer weather has moved in.
On my phone’s weather app I keep track of the weather of places I dream of going to. All year long I’m not only checking the weather in Portland and the surrounding Pacific Northwest, but I’m keeping tabs on Florence, Italy, the island of Sicily, my hometown, J’s hometown, Government Camp (which is in Mount Hood National Forest), and the town I went to high school in. I don’t know why I keep tabs on some places. Maybe it’s a way that I reminisce, maybe I just like to compare, maybe it makes me feel grateful for what I have, where I’ve been, where I want to go. It’s a silly little daydream tool.
This past week, when it barely climbed to ninety degrees one afternoon for the first time this year, I found myself daydreaming about the sun-drenched beaches of Sicily. Sometimes, when I feel the heat and glow from the sun, I close my eyes and imagine I’m under that sky, not this one. I can almost smell the salt in the air. So I made a little digital illustration to celebrate my summer daydream.
Do you also keep track of the weather in places you’ve never been to? Or maybe places you are from? I’m curious to know. Here’s a little time lapse of my digital drawing. (Expand to full screen for best view of detail work. Also, please don’t notice how much difficulty I had adding the words to the image. Ha!)
I have to admit, as much free time as I’ve had recently, I have struggled to get past a massive creative block leading up to my recent life shake-up. This has made me feel frustrated and guilty, knowing that I will not have this kind of free time available to me going forward. I feel like I should be creating like crazy, but it unfortunately doesn’t work like that. So I’ve been feeling pretty down, until I stumbled across this advice column called Ask Polly written by Heather Havrilesky.
This particular post was titled “I”m 35 and I Feel Like a Shell of a Person!” I’m laughing now as I admit the title is what grabbed my attention. It betrays a lot of what I’ve been feeling about myself and it felt like this punch to the gut when I first read it.
Though my reasons for feeling this way were not the same as the original questioner, I couldn’t help but relate to the way they felt about themselves. At one point Heather, the columnist, calls herself and the questioner “interesting, weird self-hating ovens” and I felt so seen. I too was an interesting and weird self-hating oven. The full response was exactly the wise words I needed to read right now. I cried as I read it. I reread it. Three times. And something finally shifted in me as I grieved and I was deeply moved.
All that to say I’m feeling more myself than I have for months now. And I’m ready to get back to work. If you too struggle with feelings of self-hatred and self-pity, maybe give it a read too. It can’t hurt. It might even help.
As ever, thank you so much for being here.
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Hi Nea- I appreciate your openness in this piece, and the great reference to another thought piece. Hope you had a lovely summer.