In late summer, I burn out.

August is hot and unrelenting; it’s also the month I must work outdoors. My whole month is consumed by County Fair: prep, its running, its dramas, take down, and recovery.

It’s been over almost a week but I haven’t even begun to recover.

The week before Fair, a dangerous windstorm blew a large recycling can into the street, where it knocked off one of my car’s rearview mirrors. It took two weeks for my exorbitantly expensive car insurance to match me with an autobody, just to assess the damage and name a price to fix it. While I waited, I seethed.

During Fair, it rained. One night I got trapped in the mud, my wheels stuck and not spinning.

Purple lightning streaked sideways as I worked outside, with kids and animals.

Everyone cried. I cried. From being tired, from being angry, from being anxious and scared. From that feeling of, “I can’t take this anymore,” mixed with, “There is no way to stop now, I can’t take this but I have to keep going.”

All through the dog days, I fill myself with sugar and caffeine. Stay awake. Keep up. One more push. Maybe in autumn, I will slow roast and eat crunchy. I hope so. This summer I am fueled by corn syrup and food dye.

In Defense Of All That Sugar, I sought out bright neon or pastel colors especially after seeing the Barbie movie. (Yes I saw it with Oppenheimer, same day.) When I indulged in bright colors I thought: summer is a celebration, let’s have a party!

My garden produces and my pollinator plants bloom, whether or not I am home, whether or not I can enjoy the harvest.

On the last night of Fair, I had garbage-water up to my elbows and desperately tried to get to a bathroom sink to wash with soap and water. But people kept needing things from me, and I had to keep walking with people one way or another. I’d get close to the bathroom and there was another minor-emergency I needed to advise on. I wanted to write notes on my phone and email them to myself, but not before I washed my hands!, so I muddled around trying to keep something important on my mind until I could be given enough time to wash my hands with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds, hopefully more.

Possibly a word I should embrace in the dead heat of late summer is “Surrender.” Summer is too hot but we have to keep living in it. Work outdoors can be brutal and even dangerous, but it has to get done. But doing the work my body tells me I cannot doesn’t feel like surrendering, it feels like an active but draining PUSHING. All stick, no carrot.

But there is something else that compels me, some other force. I get so focused on the work, and the steps, and the schedule that I’m hypnotized, singularly focused. I forget I have a life or any other aspects or interests outside of The Work That Must Get Done. Time moves quickly and I lose track of the days.

I came home speaking gibberish about flow states. My patient spouse listened and sent me this and yes, this is how I experience County Fair.

But I felt no peace or pleasure in Surrender. This summer, I burned bright and fast. And ultimately burned out.

And I didn’t like anything, or at least, I couldn’t finish anything. I put down three books in a row without finishing–possibly for the first time in my life. I can’t believe how many literary novels there are where the entire tension and plot is, “Will this attractive rich&privileged white character also be HAPPY?” And … what? Are those stakes? You want me to turn pages on this? No. No no no, I’d rather take a walk outside or stitch something or talk to a person and hear their stories. So I did.

The power cut off on my first day off after County Fair. I depend on the electric grid but cannot control it at all. Maybe this is the lesson of summer storms.

Well, summer has taught me enough. As far as I’m concerned it is Halloween and fall spooky season.