When you live indoors and connected to a screen, months or even years can become blurry.
Seasons used to be more important.
But for young people, it still is. Transitions are created seasonally, but your career rush can still be punctuated by a few months where you have a chance to reset and grow.
If you know someone who will be spending the summer months away, please forward this to them.
While it may be tempting to view summer as a vacation, simply an opportunity to rest and recharge, what we ultimately remember and cherish are the basics. Projects that have changed us are primarily because we helped others grow, built something, became something, or did something worth the effort.
I’m helping a friend up north recruit and train some instructors and staff for the summer. Click here for more information.
If you’re not in a position to do that, here’s a starter list of some projects you can do right where you are, without applying. However, advance planning can be very helpful.
- Take a two-week intensive course in AI and LLM and teach it to local businesses and neighborhood kids.
- Volunteer at a local nonprofit, rebuilding their website, and rewriting their fundraising emails.
- Plan and run literacy programs for children at local libraries.
- Start a local radio/TV station and work with others to create, write, edit and publish new episodes online every day.
- Join the open source community and gain trust in contributing useful code.
- Start a simple business. Give your neighbors a chance to turn their clutter into cash by holding a weekly block-wide tag sale or opening a store on eBay.
- Pledge your 60-day contribution to get out the vote and organize your allies to create a powerful force for good.
- You can work with the Fuller Center or other local groups to build or renovate homes.
- Work with local rec centers to develop outdoor learning programs for kids for the summer.
Pigeonholes are for pigeons. The beauty of summer contributions is that you get to try on new hats and see if they look good on you. We all have more agency than we would like to admit.