The Summer slump

+how I'm pulling myself out of it

Dear readers,

I apologise for my absence this past month. You’ll understand why, below. It’s the end of Summer here in Australia, so for most of my readers, it’s probably coming to the end of Winter. Perhaps you’re experiencing a Winter slump, instead — or perhaps you’ll find this resonant later this year when Summer comes and goes in the North. This piece is more personal, less intellectual, but hopefully enjoyable.

When Summer dawns, both nature and the social atmosphere inflates and people are generally in good spirits. The emergent vitality of Spring reaches its peak. You're eating mangoes by the pip, the essence of life dripping down your chin. Your seedlings are budding and blooming. The nights are balmy and ripe. People lavish their holiday baking on you. The days are long and light and life feels optimal — not because you're being especially productive, but because you’re reaping the rewards of the land's efforts and your own. You are content to linger in conversations, meals, neighborhood walks. Things taste better, fuller, and more essential.

And then, at some point, everything starts to max out and plateau. The sunflowers drop their shriveled heads. The grass browns. The mangoes become overripe and sickly; the peaches bruise. Too much of a good thing goes rotten. For a while, you keep eating the overripe stone-fruit, pretending it's still at its peak. Clinging to the idea of Summer. And then: the slump.

Life gives way to a kind of mindless lethargy. You drink your coffee but don’t really taste it. You enter and exit your apps and accounts, again and again, realising every time they have nothing of value to offer you right now. The corners of your house are dusty and the shower curtain is moulding around the edges. Forlorn laundry goes dank at the bottom of the basket.

You have all this time but feel like you have none at all. You're still getting dinner on the table and your baby to sleep but can't keep up with the dishes and there's a general, unapproachable disorder about the house. The clutter creeps around you at a greater speed than you can sort through it. You sit for long stretches with your baby as she plays, giving her more attention than she probably needs because it's easier than dealing with the feeling that you can't keep up and are generally uninspired by life…

Summer is drawing to a close here in Australia and my spirit has been drooping like our sunflowers. I've always believed that things play out on multiple levels — that analogies are not simply things we create and apply but things we discover and connect because they participate in a broader and more essential energy or meaning. The seasons are the best testament to this: the slump of Summer's end plays out in the garden as it does in the body and mind, in relationships, in culture at large. These seasonal and personal parities don't always concur in time, though they often do. In Spring I wrote about how the florescence of nature can coincide with a kind of self-blooming and with both the courage to open up to the world and the persistence to stay open in the face of challenge. Now, as Summer collapses into Autumn I feel deeply in my body and spirit that sense of lethargic over-fullness which will soon give way to change. Summer and Winter are extremes as well as plateaus. They share in a kind of death and stagnation that results from too much of the one “thing” (archetypally, heat and cold, life and death), and not enough flux or ambiguity. Autumn and Spring are those hot-and-cold liminal spaces where life intensifies and good things generate because the focus is more on processes than it is on fixed products. I’m keen for Autumn (or Fall, as many of my readers know it), because I’m ready to shed and re-structure.

But as yet, the slump persists. I've been largely absent from Substack these last weeks of Summer. I had little to no appetite to read or write or engage with the notes until just a few days ago. Our oven has been out of action for the same period, so my sourdough starter has been languishing in the fridge and if I hadn't worked up the resolve to feed it a few days ago, it probably would have devoured itself. We've been buying bread again for the first time since I started working with sourdough, because our property manager is obviously also in a slump, faffing about arranging spare parts and gas plumbers who are also mostly on leave, and not taking seriously enough my plea that I use our oven as a veritable commercial kitchen — which is to say, multiple times a day, everyday, often at max temps for bread baking or otherwise for hours and hours slow-cooking beef brisket or the like.

Granted, we've still had our stove, and I managed a batch of sourdough donuts a couple weeks ago (which were seriously good), but I’m working at less than half my typical productivity, especially when it comes to cooking and baking. Yes, I'm still throwing lunch and dinner together, but with far less reverence than is my usual. The fridge is crying out for a clean. There's a withered bunch of flowers in a parched vase on the dining table. I have a number of Substack drafts pending none of which I can bear to look at at the moment (besides this one). I've been just generally lacklustre and out of sorts since mid January. "Listless" is a favourite in our family's lexicon to describe such a state.

It’s perfectly symbolic that our oven — the hearth of our home and family and of my primary preoccupation within it — has been defunct these last weeks of Summer.

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What to do?

The first thing I’ve done is embrace the slump. A hiatus every now and then is normal and necessary. Constant productivity is a damaging and deranging pipe-dream.

But you also get to a point when you realise there's probably something you could do to help yourself out of the rut, too. Energies are procreative. Negativity breeds negativity — it is true. Slumps can ingrain themselves. Bad habits can creep up slowly.

Since my daughter was born almost a year ago, despite the overall joy and productivity of matrescence and the hands-on domesticity and creativity it has enabled me to pursue, a few negative forces have found inroads into my daily life. These are: screen time, coffee and sugar. Things I had managed for years to keep naturally at moderate levels.

I don't think these are "bad" in and of themselves. I see them more as metaphors for the habits of unearned gratification that can lead us into slumps or ruts and keep us there. On the other hand, they manifest themselves from within slump-states, too. I guess they share the function of creating cheap dopamine surges that keep us comfortable and basely satisfied but give us nothing of the bliss that is hinged on effort and pain. Isn’t it fitting that, by nature’s decree, honey should be harvested with great difficulty and risk of injury? It’s the same dynamic at play when, after much physical exertion, as on a long hike with rucksack in tow, a humble apple tastes like heaven and water like liquid gold.

Slumps come about as a kind of natural penalty for too much ease, too much goodness, too much pleasure. They come about when we take things for granted, like the fact that we probably don’t deserve the easy hit that coffee gives us every single day because we have no part in the planting, harvesting or processing of the coffee bean. I’m not saying this is a full-proof metric — so much of our modern lives is predicated on the use and enjoyment of things we don’t produce. We “work” for these things now in more detached ways. And no, I don’t genuinely believe that only those who harvest coffee should drink it. My point is, we have now more than ever in human history the capacity to bypass the effort by means of buying the reward, which makes it incredibly easy to overindulge. When you have to shell your own walnuts, you tend to have less of them than when they come shelled and ready to gorge from a plastic packet. Nature sets limits to gratification that we’ve found our way out of — but not without a cost.

I had a strong aversion to coffee throughout my pregnancy and into early postpartum. But around 6 months after giving birth, I started back on weak coffees here and there, which steadily increased to the point where they reclaimed the mantle of a wake-me-up necessity. Refined sugar, which I have never been a massive fan of, has edged its way into my regular diet these past months through my sourdough baking — cinnamon scrolls, chocolate babkas, donuts, and so on. As for screen-time, it had been a peripheral part of my life for several years after I decided, in my early twenties, to delete all of my social media accounts. I found this easy because I generally avoid over-stimulation and things that cloud my mental clarity. I came to Substack to reclaim an intellectual and creative outlet I had lost when I left academia and embraced stay-at-home motherhood. Slowly but surely, a focus on writing and intentional reading slipped into compulsive checking habits and time wasted scrolling the Notes section. As with anything, the latter has much good to offer — the point is to be intentional about it.

By the time the so-called Summer-slump reared its ugly head some three weeks ago, I was sipping mindlessly on my morning coffee, in between mouthfuls of a leftover sugar-coated donut (the fact it was homemade and sourdough is no redemption here), scrolling the Notes section at half-hearted intervals while pulling my almost-one-year-old away from the Ethernet cable she so loves to tug and chew on.

I knew something had to give.

So, without further ado, here are some things I’ve been doing to refresh my body and mind and pull it out of the Summer slump:

1. Changing my morning consumption rituals

I’m not here to tell you that downing apple cider vinegar first thing in the morning will change your life and cure all your ailments. But I do think that switching up your go-to morning beverage or breakfast can help bring you out of that state of taken-for-granted comfort which impedes growth and change. How many of us go through phases where we make and skull our morning coffees without really even enjoying them but just because that’s what we "do" in the morning and the body expects the hit?

Recently, I've opted for a tea and/or a smoothie in the morning, and might save the coffee for later in the day to break the sense that it’s necessary or a given. It’s black tea, so not without its own dose of caffeine, but I find it purer or cleaner on the palate which is refreshing and less instantly gratifying. As for smoothies, they’ve helped me steer away from breakfasts high in refined sugar while still providing the sweetness I usually prefer first thing in the morning (I love eggs, but rarely have the appetite for them in the early morning. They are our go-to for lunch). Smoothies are great because I can load them up with the protein and good fat my body needs to sustain itself throughout the day (nuts, hemp seeds, yogurt etc), but they are still light enough on the stomach while my appetite is warming up.

2. Buying (or enacting) those long-awaited storage solutions

Generally I wouldn’t recommend spending as a way out of a slump — but there are often basic things, especially storage solutions for the household, that we know we need for several months or even years to improve the flow and functioning of the house, but put off because we can "get by" without them. Part of being in a slump, though, is that feeling that you are "getting by", that nothing really has to change, but probably should if we want things to feel better than just acceptable.

For months I had been putting off buying an organising rack for our cookware cupboard which was a motley mess and a real nightmare to navigate, retrieve from and reload. So too, I had procrastinated buying a dish caddy to store our sponges and steel wool which were scattered around the edges of the basin, dripping with dish juices (sorry, that’s probably the most off-putting phrase you’ve read all month), and generally obstructing the flow, for example, when wiping down the bench space around the sink. As soon as I bit the bullet and implemented the changes, the kitchen (and my mood) was lifted.

A couple things still on my to-do list: 1) a children’s clothes rack and coat-hangers for my daughter’s ever-expanding dress collection (a nod to doting grandmothers and aunties), which is, to date, crammed into the bottom draw of our change table and/or hung over the arms of the rocking chair; 2) two racks for our shoes, one for the back door and one for the front, which we currently line against the wall neatly enough, but which become a nuisance, for example, when vacuuming and mopping; 3) an additional laundry basket so that we have one for dry clothes and another with which to take our wet clothes out to the line (you’d think I’d have this sorted by now, considering the amount of laundry I do…).

I’ve held off on these things because we are “working with them” and they don’t feel immediately necessary — but sometimes it’s exactly the things that aren’t urgent which, when heeded, can revitalise the feel and flow of the household. This leads nicely into my next point…

3. Fronting the things I usually leave until last

Under normal circumstances, when the house and its members are in a good flow rather than a slump, I would say that putting off the less pressing tasks is eminently wise. For this reason, I think that living out of the laundry basket is more than acceptable if it means that the more important things get done first. However, when in a rut, sometimes it’s that backlog of less important things which further ingrains my sense of listlessness; and flipping the order of priorities, even just for one morning, can give me some much needed impetus.

Take cloth nappy laundry, for example — any mums who use cloth, especially the kind with multiple liners, would agree that folding the parts up and storing them after each wash is almost redundant, because of the sheer speed of the turnaround. We mostly pull the parts directly from the basket or even sometimes straight from the dryer as we set up a nappy. However, I have found that for the days or periods I am lacking in general motivation for household management, it can sometimes help to start the day with these so-called pointless tasks, i.e. by packing away the nappy parts — not because this actually needs to be done, but because the doing of it can generate the motivation required to get going with everything else that’s more important.

Actions have charges, and this is why often the more we do, the more we can do — not because we have more time, but because we gain in flow and resolve with every task we get done. I’m always amazed what I can accomplish in an hour of optimal flow compared to a full day of lassitude.

A rare sight: our cloth nappy station with parts folded up and packed away

4. Lying on the floorboards, going out in the rain

Slump states often concur with a general sense of disembodiment. It’s hard to speak about these things without sounding like the next half-baked self-help guru, but embodiment is important and there are better and worse ways to achieve it. While more fully “inhabiting” the body can be intensely pleasurable, sometimes the route to fuller presence is actually through discomfort (or perceived forms of discomfort). This is core to the “Wim Hof” approach of cold water immersion and breath work. I’d be a hypocrite to recommend cold showers because I can’t manage them myself, but there are alternatives for wimps like me, too.

Something I’ve found surprisingly refreshing is lying directly on the floorboards for a while. When I traveled through Indonesia in my late teens, many of the friends I boarded with practically slept on the floor. I know the Japanese do something similar. In Indonesia, this is for climactic reasons, primarily, but also perhaps because as a culture, Indonesians are accustomed to higher embodiment in their everyday spatial practices. They squat while socialising, preparing food, drinking coffee, or waiting around (“jongkok”), sit on the floor in a circle to eat together, often eat with their hands, etc. Any luxury inscribed materially in their homes tends to be reserved for the guest room — which, in my experience, was indeed only used for guest visits.

In the globalised West, on the other hand, we tend to lead overly cushioned lives — both in the material and figurative sense. Our couches and beds are ultra-plush, our rooms are constantly climate controlled (I’m a primary offender of this, at least in the winter), we barely touch our food and teach our children to do the same from a young age, etc. When so many daily avenues for embodiment are diminished by furnishings and utensils and machines, it can feel like a radical home-coming just to lay ourselves down on the floor.

One of the most enlivening moments of the past year for me was a time I got caught in the rain walking home. I was umbrella-less and, of course, my immediate reaction was to avoid contact with the drizzle. By the time I reached our street, by necessity I’d given up all attempts to stay dry and instead embraced the downpour. The rain was pleasantly tepid and it felt delicious to surrender to it. As I approached the front door, totally soaked, I felt like I’d been baptised. I felt like running around naked in the backyard. I felt new. (I wrote about this here). It was something so simple, so easy to do, and yet so rarely done in adulthood. Children represent new life not only by virtue of their materially young bodies, but by their propensity to maintain these kinds of embodiment as their default mode of being.

And lastly, on the topic of metaphorical “baptism”, and something I hardly need to suggest: an ocean swim is one of the best ways to flush the body and spirit with new life. In Greek we call this thalassotherapeia, “sea therapy”. For those lucky enough to live in proximity to the sea, this is probably already a given. For others — find different forms of immersion in something bigger; something in which you can float and to which you can offer your “self” for a while; something that is pure motion, pure process, pure flow. Music and dance are great examples (see links at the end). In short: if your spirits are slumping, get your body to float for a while.

5. Getting on with it

Sometimes there’s no way out of the slump but through. This is a kind of fake-it-till-you-make-it approach. And it’s easy when you have things (like tiny human beings) who depend on you for their survival. I’ve noticed, when comparing my life before having a child with now, that I simply cannot wallow as much in a rut as I used to, and I’m a much better person for it. I think the latter is a consequence of a very self-focused culture. When you have children, or farm animals, for example, that hinge on you being a functional and productive human being, slumps naturally (and rather quickly) sort themselves out. They must. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like getting up, or cooking, or doing the laundry — you just have to do it. You have duties now, you see, not just rights.

I’ve thought recently about the distinction between caring for and caring about. You usually care about the things you have a duty to care for, but you don’t always have to actively care for everything you care about. When your life is full of the former, slumps don’t last long. I didn’t plan to make this piece a social commentary, but for any readers without children who are hesitant to have them because they feel they don’t have the time or energy to care for them — that’s not always the right logic. Taking on the duty of care for a totally fragile and dependent being is actually energising because it brings you out of your solipsistic and ruminating self (which can drain a lot of your energy) and into the world of practice and getting-things-done. Having children is embodiment 101, especially if you are full-time and hands-on about their everyday care (a nod here to stay-at-home mums).

I also know a farmer on the island of Ithaca in Greece, where I have ancestry, who wakes at 5am every morning to tend to his sheep and goats — as most farmers must and do. He actually does not have children but in a certain sense, he has hundreds. He often walks for miles to tend to the different flocks, which are dispersed throughout the extensive, wild and rocky mountainside terrain of his farmland. His whole life revolves around the care of other beings and he is, even now in his sixties, full of vitality and resolve. Slumps for him would be little more than a brief afternoon siesta in the Greek summer heat.

And so, in a sense, I’m riding through the rut simply by being a full-time mum who tries to outsource as little as possible. I’m sure most mums out there would agree — especially those juggling multiple children at once, and especially those with homesteads to boot — that while there will always be times of reduced elan, motivation and productivity, there’s no time to dwell in the doldrums when so much life depends on you.

Buying 20kg of sauce tomatoes from our local wholefoods collective was probably not the best thing to do during a slump. Half of them are still sitting on the bench (I plan to deal with them today…). But on the other hand, bringing this great mass of tomatoes into my “care” means I kind of just have to step up and make the damn passata — lest I find myself with a rotting waste in a week’s time.

As a closing note, I’d love to hear from you how you help yourself out of energetic slumps? And I’d especially love to hear from fellow mums about how they keep up with the clutter and flow of the household when 75% of the day is spent pulling babies and toddlers away from hazards? Count this as somewhat of a plea from a relatively new mum whose almost-one-year-old is almost-walking and whose house is plugged up with makeshift barriers in front of fireplaces and areas for which we have no baby gates. In theory I’d like my daughter to go free-range and don’t want to limit her exploration and development too much — in practice, how do I deal with the hot splattering pan on the stove if she’s not cordoned off somewhere safe within eye’s reach?

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Some suggestions for a sonic “baptism”

Listen: Nils Frahm

Watch: Greek folk dances (suggestions here, here and here)

Do: Gabrielle Roth’s 5 Rhythms dance practice (or live it vicariously as I do)

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Upcoming on Penelope’s Loom

Our birth story: cord prolapse & eternal recurrence

Beauty in the home (part 4): bringing the outside, in

The symbolism of loom-weaving and its eponymous relationship to Penelope’s Loom

Unpacking ‘Quality’ with Christopher Alexander and Robert Pirsig

A comment on what’s really at stake in the “trad-wife” movement