by Daria Kieffer

It is so hot outside. I guess summer finally decided to show itself in Minnesota, and, as much as I love it, I’ve decided to retreat into a nice cold coffee shop to spend some quality time with my laptop. I’ve officially been living in the Twin Cities, working and playing with Summer of Solutions, for three weeks now, and it’s been a crazy blur of activity the whole time.

It’s funny- when I think about all that we’ve been doing for the past 21 days (farming, repairing bikes, meeting with millions of community partners, potlucks, more meetings), I wonder why I’m not about to keel over with exhaustion. I so clearly remember last summer, when I was working 40 hours per week at a consignment store, and all I felt like doing after an eight hour day was plopping down on my couch with some ice cream. Why aren’t these long days depleting me that way? It’s probably a whole bunch of different things, but I think that maybe it has something to do with something kind of simple: excitement! I’m so excited about what we’re doing here, this summer. I guess it goes back to something I remember my mother and father telling so many times as I pondered what-I-should-be-when-I-grow-up: do something that makes you excited to get out of bed every morning. I never doubted that little piece of wisdom, but I think I’m just now realizing what it means.

A couple of weeks ago, I read this blog post by this amazing woman I met a couple of years ago. She wrote about the difference between work and play, and about how the biggest difference seems to be choice -as soon as what you do feels like something you chose for yourself, it becomes a whole different creature.I’m glad I’ve gotten to know this creature well this summer, not only because of how important I think it is, but because, now that I’ve experienced “work” like this,  I don’t think I could ever really settle for anything less.