How To Spend Summer Break Productively

It’s been kind of a slow and kind of a disappointing summer for me so far. While I’d hoped to have started on a journey of self-discovery and career growth through an amazing internship by now, I’m sitting at home, about to click Play on yet another been-there, seen-that web series for the sole purpose of crossing it off my Watchlist and allowing myself to feel like I’m not completely wasting the last two-month vacation I’ll probably ever get to enjoy for the rest of my life. Third year of college about to begin and to my horror, I have next to nothing to show for it.

This is not how I imagined my life would be like at twenty.

Yeah, yeah. I can hear the chuckles and imagine the smiles and the mental reiteration of, “Who ever does?” and I agree, who ever does imagine their life the way it actually turns out? But get this, eleven year old me? She had HUGE plans. And twenty year old me? She hasn’t even STARTED on these plans and I’m beginning to get a teensy bit worried that I never will.

Also, the twenty-first century’s obsession with ‘productivity’ is really stressing me out. Do I always have to be on the go all the time? Am I the one taking this too chill or has everyone else just forgotten to live for a while? What’s so wrong with spending the summer focussing on having a great time instead of slaving at an internship to add another line in my CV? Or is there, perhaps, a magical middle ground?

Turns out my stressed-out, wanting-to-chill-out ass is sort of a low-key genius. She found the mystical middle ground. She came up with a brilliant idea – all by herself, may I add – to embark on a beautiful trip of writing a novel to cheat her way out of choosing between a good time and slavery. Writing is therapeutic for me and at the same time, it gives me a sense of achievement. Voila! Problem solved.

Or not. I forgot I’ve had writer’s block for nearly two years now but this summer, I’m gonna fight it tooth and nail. My first novel deserves all the effort. Any tips?

Also, would it be totally, off-the-rack presumptuous of me to think that you guys would actually like to hear how I get along with my experience of trying to write an actual book, all of my own, for the very first time?