As August slips quietly into memory, I find myself lingering in the long shadows of summer evenings. The light hangs a little lower, the air cools more quickly, and even the cicadas sound like they know their song is ending. It’s always around this time that I wonder about not just what I’ve written or made during these months, but what summer itself has taught me.
Summer is rarely gentle. It blazes with too much heat and humidity, overwhelms with noise, and insists on fullness. It pulls us into gardens and oceans, toward festivals and fireworks, into moments that are too bright, too fleeting, too much. And yet, tucked inside the frenzy is a quiet truth. Creativity, like summer, thrives in cycles of abundance and rest.
For me, this summer has been a reminder that the creative life is not about relentless forward motion. It is about letting ourselves soak in experience, like the scents of blooming flowers, the sticky sweetness of peaches, the echo of laughter at twilight. Then trusting that these small sensory impressions will surface later in our work. Summer gives us permission to step away from the desk and fill the well.
It also teaches us impermanence. No matter how much we want to hold onto the warmth, the light, the endless days, summer slips away. And in that loss, we remember why we create. To capture what can’t last, to honor the fleeting, to pin moments of joy and longing onto the page (or canvas, or photograph, or song).
As creatives, we live in the tension between savoring the present and shaping it into something lasting. Summer, with its ripe fruit and sudden storms, shows us that beauty is often temporary. Yet that temporary status doesn’t diminish it. Instead, it makes us more attentive, more willing to notice, more determined to create.
So as August folds itself into September, I carry with me not just memories of summer, but its lessons to rest as deeply as I work, to let impermanence sharpen my attention, and to trust that every fleeting moment—whether dazzling or ordinary—has a place in my creative life.
And maybe that’s the real gift of summer. It reminds us that art, like life, is not about holding on forever. It’s about noticing deeply, savoring fully, and then letting go—with the faith that something new will rise in the changing light.
