The Myth
Every summer, someone will inevitably say, "It must be nice having six weeks off."
I outwardly smile.
Because the truth is, I don't think I've ever really had six weeks off.
As a teenager, I spent part of every summer following my dad around the local agricultural show, fetching tools, carrying cable and generally making myself useful while he wired the site. As a student, I worked pub shifts through Pembrokeshire's tourist season. Later came the summers spent running children's playschemes. Later came weekends and holidays firing pizzas from a wood-fired oven at weddings, festivals and community events. Once I became a teacher, the holidays became the time for everything else. Alongside it all came teaching, which brought its own rhythm of planning for September, creating resources, catching up on life admin and trying to recover before another school year began.
Even this year isn't entirely free. I've got a comic project for a client that's steadily taking shape.
I'm not sure whether it's age, experience, or simply that this is the first summer in a long time where I've been present rather than constantly somewhere else, but I've found myself looking back more than usual. This year feels different.
Not because I'm doing less. If anything, I've probably been busier than ever. The garden has become a full-scale project. What started as a bit of weeding has evolved into retaining walls, irrigation, greenhouse plans, wildlife planting, and more wheelbarrows of soil than I care to count. I've spent evenings writing for my website, experimenting with animation, learning new software, and finally tackling ideas that have sat patiently in notebooks for years.
The difference is that these projects are mine. Nobody asked me to build them or gave me a deadline. There's no one is waiting for a report at the end. I'm doing them because I want to.
There's something surprisingly liberating about that.
Defined Focus vs Freedom to Focus
During term time, life becomes wonderfully focused. The pupils need you. Your colleagues need you. Lessons need planning. There is always someone who needs your attention before you need your own.
The rest of life waits patiently in the background. The dentist appointment. The annual vet visit for the cats. The garden gate that's been patiently waiting to be fixed for months. The website that's nearly finished. The spare room that somehow became a storage room.
Teachers often joke that summer is when we finally get our adulting done, and there's more truth in that than most people realise. Six weeks is enough time to remember that the hallway need still needs repainting, the weeds don't care about school holidays, and the hedge certainly wasn't waiting until September.
The thing is, I like making things and it's not because they're on a to-do list or because they're part of my job. Creating something that didn't exist yesterday is deeply satisfying. The garden has reminded me that progress is rarely dramatic. It's another leaf, another flower, another butterfly. Teaching has always been much the same; you only notice how far something has come when you stop long enough to look back.
The Recharge
Perhaps that's why I don't really switch off during the holidays. I don't think that's how I'm wired. I don't recharge by doing nothing. I recharge by making progress, learning something new, solving a problem, or seeing an idea gradually become real.
Maybe that's what these summers have always been about, not escaping work, but rediscovering purpose.
By the time September arrives, the garden will still have weeds, there will still be jobs waiting around the house, and I'll probably have thought of another project before I've finished the current one.
But I'll also remember something that's easy to lose during a busy school year.
Teaching is something I love doing but it isn't the only thing that defines me. Sometimes six weeks isn't about taking a break from work, it's about finding your way back to yourself.