I tend to loathe summer. I used to think it was just the heat and humidity that bothered me, being a curly-haired person and all. But I’ve done some intensive thinking on the subject lately, and I’ve come to be about 98% sure that it’s more than that. The apprehension I feel toward summer has something to do with what summer used to mean for me, years ago, and the dread that comes on when things start getting humid and those sense memories get triggered.

It’s no wonder, really. There were some painful things wrapped up in the sensations of summer. First of all, there was the fact that summer meant wearing less clothing and the accompanying terror about showing my body that used to come on when it was time to don shorts and tank tops. There was the way that summer was synonymous with loneliness, when I was working night shifts at Starbucks and barely ever saw my mom even though we lived in the same house. When friends would all travel for months to summer programs in Europe. When the other high schoolers would be drinking fruity alcohol at house parties while I stayed home reading.

This isn’t to say that summer was all bad. I’ve had plenty of glorious abandon wrapped into summer days past, jumping into shocking-cold lake water and dangling my toes off the dock at twilight. It’s just that the dread tends to look past those memories and just dredge up the expansive loneliness of the warmer months.

Armed with some of this knowledge about what memories and sensations summer brings up for me, I tread gently into the humid days. I’ve been reciting an incantation. At first, I thought maybe this was a tool I picked up from Havi, but I looked around her blog a bit yesterday and couldn’t find anything to back that up. So it might have come from there, or it might just be something I thought up. Can’t be sure. Anyway, each time I’m bowled over by a rush of heavy summer emotion, I remind myself of one thing.

Things are different now than they were then.

My reality now isn’t the same as it used to be. These days, I don’t have to be lonely. I have a lovely fiancee who wants to hang out all the time. I have a 9 to 5 job that allows me to see people at night and on the weekends. I’m gradually cultivating my skills of reaching out for help when I feel myself flailing. I’ve worked up to the point that very little of my time is spent worrying about the size of my body (or even thinking about it at all), and I’ve realized that just because other people wear bikinis, I can choose to wear whatever summer attire I darn well please. I’m focusing on creating things instead of hating on myself nonstop, which is probably the most significant, yet also subtle, change.

And still, this isn’t to say that things are perfect now. There’s plenty of worrying going on, people are getting sick, layoffs are happening left and right, and the natural (and human-made) disasters just keep coming. Just like things weren’t all bad then, they aren’t all good now. Still, no matter what, I have this incantation, this reminder that circumstances are permeable, that life is in flux. Even though summer brings up those deep-seated painful memories, I have this tiny rope to grab onto, pulling me into a future where summers are breezier and lighter, and where past experiences are a platform for today’s sweetness.

. . .

Speaking of things being different, last Saturday, some of my food photos were hanging at the Greenpoint Food Market, a monthly event that features hundreds of homemade treats. I had a photo shoot in Manhattan and didn’t get to the market until the very end, but it looked like it was a hopping, humid good time. It’ll happen again in another month, so I hope to see you there.

I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me.

How many times has that one come out of your mouth? It’s crossed my lips more times than I’d care to count. We wonder what’s wrong with us when we go swimsuit shopping and can’t find any suits that fit. When we make a mistake at work on the simplest of tasks. When we feel depressed despite being employed and having a family. Plus, marketers are always telling us just what they think it is that’s wrong with us, because they have the product that’s going to fix it. The outside world isn’t doing us any favors by reinforcing this belief that there’s something about us that isn’t right.

The reality of things is that we’re people. Real, live, breathing people who are all different from one another and who constantly change and evolve. The swimsuits you tried on? They’re made for the masses. And thank goodness, you aren’t the masses. Those suits aren’t made to fit you, but rather to fit a common denominator of body type that doesn’t actually exist.

And that work mess-up? Office tasks are made for a specific type of person who can work in a specific way. Not everybody’s brain is made for office work. Which is why your brain sometimes just doesn’t quite cooperate there. The problem is not that you aren’t good enough for your job. It’s that your brain can’t be forced to fit in all the time.

The fact that you’re not entirely satisfied despite all that you have is the same thing. That everyone will be fulfilled by the traditional definition of “success” is a myth. In reality, it takes constant perseverance and refinement to identify what makes us happy and then make it happen. Happiness is a process, not a one-time event or a static state of being.

The problem is not with us. The problem is that we’re trying to squeeze ourselves into the available boxes, none of which are custom tailored. The truth nobody wants you to know is that there’s nothing wrong with you. As was said in Bridget Jones’ Diary (not that I’ve watched that movie multiple times or anything), “You’re perfect. Just as you are.” Slap that on a notecard and stick it to your mirror, eh?

Until recently, I had never considered what my values were. The word “values” was one I associated with right-wing scariness, generally the sort of people/organized groups that made me want to run down the street in the other direction. The association I had? “Family” values. Reminds me of: too much television, unhappy marriages, scary divorces, microwaveable foods, suburban takeover, too much work, not enough play, gender binaries, football, beer, shopping malls, mediocrity, and more. Of anything, I wanted to get away from those. Because ew. If those were values, I didn’t want any on my plate, thankyouverymuch. I wanted, instead, a heaping serving of radical, sex-positive, queer-embracing feminist awesomeness with nothing on the side.

Then my coach, Dian, introduced me to values in a way that didn’t remind me of any of that icky stuff I listed above. Before our first coaching session, I had a bunch of self-discovery to do. Dian sent me some (fun) forms to help me figure out what I wanted to work on with her, as well as what was most important to me. One page focused entirely on my values. And while (as I subsequently learned) I certainly have strong values, I had never thought to take the time to identify and examine them before. After all, I was too busy running away from the aforementioned scary “family” values.

Of all the forms Dian gave me to complete, this was the one that took me the most time. While “values” is a word that gets thrown around all the time, I didn’t know what it meant when applied to my own life. Now that I’m sitting down to write about it, I find that BusinessDictionary.com actually lends a fairly succinct definition: “important, enduring beliefs shared by the members of a culture about what is good or valuable and what is not. Values exert major influence on the behavior of an individual and serve as broad guidelines in all situations.” Now that I think about it, my values have definitely been influenced by my culture, though they’re built more on my life experiences and particular subcultures I’ve experienced than on what I’d think of as mainstream American culture. They certainly have an influence on my behavior, and now that I’m aware of them, they are useful guidelines in a great variety of situations.

I should step back for a moment and explain something else to you. Along with the photography fun I shared with you last week, there’s another big thing I’m starting now. I recently enrolled in the International Coach Academy (ICA) to learn to be a life coach. I’ll tell you more later, but for now, let this serve as an explanation of my in-depth examination of values and their purpose.

Anyway, according to my learning in ICA, we generally live our lives according to five to eight values at once. Those may change over time (I personally find that some of mine change according to the day), but there are some that stay fairly constant. Values can act as signposts along our internal road, and we can often tell if our actions aren’t in line with our values because we feel somehow off. We just don’t feel right.

Since I began to identify what values are and how they relate to me, I’ve been able to understand more fully why I just didn’t feel “right” about certain situations in my past. When I worked at a coffee shop on the Lower East Side, I just didn’t feel right working with some overtly misogynistic and offensive coworkers, despite the fact that they never did anything to hurt me personally. I now realize that spending time listening to their naive and anti-woman banter was running up against one of my values: social justice, which to me implicitly includes feminism. Oh, and maybe there’s a valid reason that going to shopping malls stresses me out. Maybe it’s because the whole thing is about buying stuff, and one of my values is simplicity. And in my brain, buying stuff doesn’t equal simplicity. The beauty of all this is that values are entirely individual. For others, going shopping might be just the thing that leads them to simplicity. Or others might have entirely different values, which is fine. It’s good, in fact.

So not only do our values help us to know when things aren’t right, but if we think about them and write them down, they can serve as internal maps. If I know that simplicity is one of my values, and that shopping doesn’t jive with my definition of simplicity, then I can make the informed decision to skip that shopping trip and read instead. Or clean the house instead. Or meditate. Whatever does jive.

Time for a game! Yay games!

Now. Because I personally know that it’s daunting to try to identify your values if this is something you’ve never before considered (or even if you have), here’s a little game to get you started. First, grab a piece of paper. Spend five minutes writing down any quality you can think of that you might consider a “value”. See the bottom of this post for ideas, which you’re more than welcome to use.  Once you’ve spent five minutes simply covering this piece of paper with every quality you can think of, no matter how outlandish, get a new piece of paper, and select ten words from the previous piece of paper that resonate most with who you are. Once you’ve selected those ten, number them from one to ten, one being the value that’s most important to you, and ten being the least critical on the list. You’ve now created a preliminary values map for yourself. I promise that if you spend some time looking at the list, or journaling on it, or meditating or just having it in the back of your mind, you’ll learn a little bit more about yourself than you knew before.

Here are a few ideas to get you started (though the options are endless): kindness, generosity, power, financial freedom, volunteerism, social justice, self-expression, independence, creativity, health, friendship, family, simplicity, hard work, fun, learning, playfulness, companionship, wealth, understanding, stability, sensuality, camaraderie, compassion, conformity, individuality, and so many more.

Today I have some more photo fun for you. It has to do with love. Smoochy, laughey, so-cute-you-could-faint love.

Love at the Brooklyn Botanic gardens.

Kisses behind the cherry blossoms (you guys know we can see you, right?).

Oh, stop it. You’re making people jealous.

Oh! Even sharing some laughter with Lady Liberty. Because even copper ladies who wear size 879 shoes like to get in on the love.

. . .

What’s that you said? You want to see more photos? Well, come back tomorrow. I’ve got treats for you. They’re sugar-free, but tasty and colorful. Okay, fine, maybe they’re not literally tasty. But they’re sure as heck colorful.