August 29, 2025
In a world where every summer must be christened a new flavor of ___ girl summer, mine for the past few years have increasingly been singing the same melody: one long, hot, potato summer.
Sitting down with my breakfast at the appointed time on the first day of school, kids safely dispatched, to resume my discipline of writing. Quiet house, alarm set to remind me to get up in time for a later appointment, bowl of granola at my side. Ready to write!
What should I write?
Hmm, I haven’t sent a newsletter in a long time, I should probably write one? (Take a bite.)
Its been a while so this first one back must be spectacular! . . . like . . . hmm, what do I have to say that is spectacular? Surely if I keep looking at this screen long enough I will have something to say! (Take another bite.)
Oh my gosh this time allocated to writing is excruciating. By sheer force of will I will endure. I will keep typing. I am a machine entirely out of practice and I must crank out some words to restart the engine. (Gosh answering an email would feel good right now.)
It’s no different from working out, right? When you haven’t done it in some time, those first few goes are clunky and slow; you can barely run a mile, shrivel at two push-ups. But you practice and it gets easier, you get better? You just give it time? (Oh good, a text message, I can take a break to answer!)
What do I really want to tell people? (Chew a bite of peach, ponder.)
That I took a break.
Well, that may be the wrong verb form.
A break was taken.
To put it bluntly, I went full potato.
After over a year of sporadic trying, I haven’t yet undergone an evaluation which could lend scientific credibility to what is presently mere intuition, the Instagram algorithm has strong suspicions that I have ADHD.
But you don’t need to identify as neuro-diverse to relate to the feeling of crashing into the limits of your capacity, feeling like you’re drowning, or like the motivation that sometimes drives you has suddenly bottomed out, and all you want to do is curl up with a book or collapse on a couch, but don’t have permission. To crave an escape from your obligations, to give minimal effort to non-negotiables and let the rest go for a season, but fearing it would mean you’re lazy, you’re failing. To feel ashamed when you can’t keep mustering up the energy.
That’s how it felt for a season before I pulled the plug entirely and took a sabbatical which allowed me to re-set what matters to me. And that’s what I was starting to feel this summer, after an intense few months of working into a new rhythm.
The difference between me a few years ago and me this summer was now, when I felt energy stores sinking, I stopped. I actually did curl up with a book, collapse on a couch. Not neglecting my responsibilities in favor of rest, as the post caption above states–but regularly choosing rest over more productivity. Explicit permission to not squeeze maximum juice. To get through the day and call it good enough. To take a long, hot, potato summer.
(Not hot potato summer—that would be something else entirely. That comma tho!)
I didn’t totally plan for this to happen. But come end of June, with that first dip out of the frenzied, disciplined routine of the school year into the frenzied chaotic recreation of summer, I just couldn’t seem to make myself sit down and write.
At first I said I was procrastinating, postponing a should until the window for one newsletter had melded into the next. Not that sending a newsletter is bringing world peace exactly. But I felt guilty about skipping it.
Then eventually I stopped feeling guilty and started feeling like . . . I needed rest. And I should take some.
Could I in fact count my procrastination-induced break as a smart thing to do, a pause to reinvigorate things, even if it happened by accident? Maybe if you choose to embrace the accident, really lean into it, it still counts? (Take another bite. Oh wait, that’s the end of my breakfast. No more hiding.)
Yes! It counts!
The potato post resonates not only because I am on the cusp of emerging from my potato era, but because of how it celebrates the role that potato time plays:
Potato time isn’t dead time. It’s fertile. Like my sabbatical last year, like a weekly Sabbath, like naps.
Kirk Byron Jones speaks of what this post calls potato time as the inhale, the first part of the cycle of breathing which is part of and precedes the more externally visible exhale. Inhaling, receiving, is the first thing we do as humans in the womb: “the crucial first act of life is the act of acceptance.” And inhaling is interconnected with exhaling: “Both actions are mutually dependent and essential. If there is no inhaling than exhaling cannot occur, and vice versa.”
We usually think of summer as a massive disruption of the useful routines of the school year, which zoom us forward, like airport conveyor belts, down the pass of things we need on a recurring basis, all the getting stuff done and keeping life moving.
But what if the summer disruption and the potato time it triggers, is, like Sabbath, a necessary part of the broader routine of breathing in before we breathe out? What if this regularly occurring disruption, even when we crash into it, not something to minimize or avoid, but an integral part of the rhythm?
Dear reader, I know you’re probably smart enough to know this at a theoretical level.
But do we believe it enough to allow ourselves to be potatoes?
What would happen if you tried?
