It’s back-to-school time here in suburban Philly, and since I’ve been seriously slacking on my writing over the past several months — of late, the phrase “use it or lose it!” has been gnawing menacingly at the back of my mind — I thought maybe a classic “What I Did on my Summer Vacation” essay would help me ease back into it.
Incidentally, one super-fun part of getting to really know myself in sobriety has been discovering, in my late 40s, that I’m pretty textbook ADHD, on top of the old anxiety and depression and the (relatively) new perimenopause. I guess this explains why it’s been so damn hard for me to sit still and/or herd all the cats in my brain. When I’m not performing therapy for clients or rehashing their sessions in progress notes — or, more like thinking about how far behind I am and how I really should be doing progress notes — my head is perpetually purring with thoughts, ideas, random songs, memories, outfit options….
Looks like my essay style is gonna be “stream of consciousness,” so buckle your life jackets and find your center of gravity. Here we go! 🌊
Let me say for starters that what I didn’t do on my summer vacation was take enough vacation. My husband and I begged off work for a couple of days around the 4th of July when my family came to visit — see last post from two months ago — and we spent a long weekend on Long Beach Island (see above) for our 19th wedding anniversary. That’s it. And that’s on me, failing to draw better boundaries around my full-time therapy schedule in order to stave off burnout. 🥵
I am feeling it now, y’all. Thank heaven for Labor Day.
At least I can say, though, that I’ve been making my free time count. Instead of sleeping away the stress on the weekends, numbing out by curling up in bed after my Saturday morning run and pulling the blackout blinds to shut out the world, as was my habit over over much of the past year, I’ve been venturing out in the sun/rain/stifling humidity to take on new athletic challenges that involve…gasp…interacting with others. 😳
Starting in late June, my colleague invited me to sign up for the stand-up paddleboard yoga class she teaches at a local park (Falls Township, pictured above). I initially balked, having never touched a board or a paddle, or done any yoga ever outside my own living room (s/o to the YogaWorks DVD instructors who have become household names up in here over the past 20 years!) Hell, I hadn’t been in a group fitness setting since I left the CrossFit cult like 8-ish years ago, and my only exposure to “water sports” beyond the community swim lessons I took as a kid in the ’80s was pond skating in the Poconos back when it still got cold enough for that to be safe.
Looking back, it’s kind of weird that I grew up so close to Lake Michigan and all its tributaries in northern Illinois and never felt drawn to the water. Apologies to my Aunt Barb, who tried her best to get us into canoeing; the “getting to know myself as an adult” process has taught me that my body vehemently resists any type of containment, and it seems like the stand-up paddleboard offers the feeling of freedom that I have always instinctively craved, which just isn’t so palpable in a cramped kayak or canoe.
So I guess I heard the voice of my adventurous inner child. yearning for that freedom, and I signed up for yoga, on a board, on a public lake. 🤯 I went to class all by myself, which of course made me the only one there without an emotional-support posse — and apparently made me an easy mark for weird dudes in the park looking for a date (that is a whole other story).
I immediately fell in love!
…With paddleboarding. Just to be clear.
I also fell in the lake. One time. The first time. And in my defense, I was trying to hold a wobbly Warrior 2 while the person on the board next to me was losing their balance and splashing down, setting off a rough-sea domino effect. I’d been doing a bang-up job maintaining a chilled-out beginner’s mindset up to that point, but the try-hard competitor was quickly unmasked when I yelped “dammit!” and slapped the water, feeling the other women’s silent stares boring into my skull as I muscled back onto my board. 😬
Since then, I’ve channeled that intensity into sheer commitment, and I haven’t missed a chance to get out on the water. By the fourth and final yoga class of the season, I was moving through the vinyasa much less herky-jerkily, staying dry (except for the sweat), and really feeling my strength and balance — physical and mental — improve. I started extending my board rental for a few hours after each class to practice paddling around the lake. I got so completely hooked on the combination of serene surroundings and kickass workout that SUP basically became (has become?) my entire personality.
I love that it’s a solitary pursuit, allowing me to commune with nature in complete silence without a phone, a schedule or any sense of time or obligation, other than deference to the turtles, water fowl and fishing boats minding their business. Since my husband is the one human I don’t mind communing with in my non-therapist hours, I roped him into paddling at Falls Park a few Saturdays before his weekly pickleball league practice, and we paddled in the bay at Harvey Cedars Marina on our Jersey shore trip. Tomorrow, to celebrate the holiday AND my 86th month of continuous sobriety, we’re going to test our SUP prowess on the reservoir at Marsh Creek State Park in Philly’s western burbs.
It’s no surprise to find out that hyperfixation is a standard ADHD trait. It explains so much about me; you have no idea!
The arrival of fall is saving me from paddleboard burnout, simply because my local rental place is closing for the season. I did complete the above cycle with a few “hobbies” this summer, though, abandoning several TV series midstream (if you made it through “Pluribus,” you have my respect!) and getting so frustrated with “House of the Dragon” that I still haven’t watched the S3 finale.
Maybe it’s because I deep-dove to the deepest depths of every single bonkers documentary that dropped on Netflix, and doomscrolled the news every day on Instagram Threads, and I got so infuriated/overstimulated that I needed a break from screens.
I also went HAM on reading, specifically banned books, which could explain the “paralysis by analysis” issues keeping me from being able to write. Those books gave me so much to think about that the critical thinking centers of my brain blew a fuse.
Still, thanks to the “Banned Camp” podcast and hosts Jen and Dan, I devoured “1984,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” while giving “Brave New World” and “Slaughterhouse Five” a few chapters of a chance before deciding, nope, sorry, not my thing. The pod posits in every episode that there’s never a good reason to ban any book, unless of course you happen to be averse to human beings accessing their humanity, or scared of them gettin’ ideas! 😱
No coincidence, that’s the driving force behind all the evil dystopian, backward-thinking, drunk-on-power-and-control villains in these “taboo” stories. Those who, in reality, are evil and backward-thinking and drunk on power and control believe that if they just hide, or burn, their playbook, no one will realize/remember that it’s full of the same old ancient plays that led to chaos and destruction again and again throughout human history, and then we’ll all just sit back and allow their chaotic destruction to wipe us, and ultimately our entire planet, from existence. Easy peasy.
I couldn’t help but notice that a common thread running through most, if not all, of these “scary books,” as Banned Camp calls ‘em, is the tremendous power of nature in helping humans connect to what is real and true and meaningful about life. Obviously, that’s what I found in paddleboarding, and before that skiing, skating, hiking, running, camping, or just playing around outside.
It’s the foundation of ecopsychology, which is the basis of ecotherapy, the side specialty that I still practice from time to time with clients who aren’t fazed by bugs, high temps, soupy air, wildfire fog, incessant lawnmowers and leaf blowers…or, in other words, they’re willing to take our sessions outdoors.
Modern society, with all its technological “advancements,” has ripped humans farther and farther away from our roots as part of a symbiotic ecosystem. We truly are just small blips in a vast universe full of interdependent beings meant to coexist, share resources and feed off the same life force, and yet, our insistence on self-centered, insatiable consuming and capitalizing on everything and everyone around us is a prescription for poor mental health and dysfunctional patterns.
Nature has been the “higher power” helping me to rise above my human issues and Earthly struggles to live sober for 7+ years and work with traumatized people in a helping profession amid the rise of fascism/crumbling of democracy. If it’s just another form of distraction or obsession to be habitually outside, that’s at least better for my wellbeing than chronically online.
Gotta give proper respect to Threads, though. It does inform and inspire! I’m embarrassed to say that I was unfamiliar with the work of Wendell Berry until folks on Threads mourned his death last week; he was, it would seem, a kindred spirit who turned to the natural world for stability, sanity, beauty and hope when the human world felt too crazy, too ugly, too much.
One of his most famous poems is called “The Peace of Wild Things.” I’m going to close this post with an excerpt, and a few more nature pics from my Summer 2026 album, as the September weather today is perfectly on point and my ADHD ass is desperate to put down the device and get out for a run!
Jen Wielgus Journalism 