There's a particular feeling that shows up for some of us at the end of summer, and I don't think it has a good name yet.
It's not exhaustion exactly. It's the sense of having had a lot of good things happen and not being sure you actually got any of them. The trips happened. The cookouts happened. The long evenings happened. And somewhere in there you were mostly managing logistics, and now it's August and you're vaguely behind on a season you were supposed to enjoy.
My garden is the clearest version of this in my own life right now. I planted it in May with reasonable intentions, and then the heat came, and then the rain came, and everything out there took it as a personal invitation. The tomatoes are taller than I am. The zucchini have opinions. There's something in the corner I've stopped trying to identify. I keep walking past it thinking I should be harvesting, and instead I feel faintly guilty about produce.
You probably have your own version. It doesn't have to be a garden. It's whatever got away from you this summer while you were busy keeping everything running.
Here's what I've come to think: the problem usually isn't a shortage of good things in our lives. It's that the good has outpaced our capacity to take any of it in.
And capacity is a real thing, physiologically. Delight isn't a willpower state — it's a nervous system state. Your body has to drop down out of planning and tracking and scanning before enjoyment can register. If you've been running hard for months, you don't get to walk into a vacation and feel what you were hoping to feel. The body lags behind the calendar. You show up to the thing you planned, you're technically present, and nothing lands.
That's not a character problem. It's a sign your capacity is low. And it's worth taking seriously — delight is not extra credit for people who have already answered all their emails. It's evidence that some part of you still feels safe enough to be unguarded.
So the useful question for August isn't how to squeeze more in before school starts. It's what would actually raise your capacity to receive what's already there.
That looks different for different people. For some, the return of structure genuinely helps — predictability lets the nervous system stop bracing. For others, structure is exactly what's been eating them alive, and what they need is unscheduled time they don't have to justify. Sleep helps almost everyone. So does time outside, and stretches of the day where nothing is being asked of you.
Mostly, capacity comes back in small doses before it comes back in large ones. Not the big trip. The first sip of coffee before anyone else is up. A kid doing something ridiculous. Five minutes where you actually look up. Those register when bigger things can't, and they're how the system practices.
Which is why I'm going to go pick a tomato and eat it standing in the yard, rather than planning a proper harvest I will never get to. Abundance you never take in doesn't count as abundance. It's just something else to feel behind on.
And if the flatness doesn't lift — if it's been months and rest hasn't touched it — come in. Sleep, thyroid, hormones, and mood are all worth looking at. Sometimes capacity needs more than a change of season.
—Stephane