summer ennui; summer forlorn
Close your eyes and picture the cusp of warmer weather. You feel a warmer than usual breeze. Your body is used to the cold breeze but this feels different now. With this breeze you smell the scent of spring bloomed flowers. For me, it's the golden wattle. A nostalgic song from your teens also plays in the background in your head. For me, it's transatlanticism - death cab for cutie.
You would think this feeling of the changing season, warmth, and summertime would be exciting. It is a for a lot of people. It signals that there is change and it will be a time for visiting the beach, staying out, more daylight, and warmth to the soul.
But often, I am taken back with a feeling of nostalgia and a loss of the very season that is yet to come. It's the realisation that things are about to get different and at least in Australia, a realisation that the year is coming to an end and it's time to enjoy the fruits of your winter toil. And not just for myself, but people around me will also change and start to enjoy their time.
Will I be left out from this? Have I worked enough to participate this year? Or will this be another time that elapses and I find myself back in winter again?
I couldn't really put my finger on this until someone I know coined something and articulated the feeling really well1: summer ennui
ennui: a feeling of being tired, bored, and dissatisfied.
Connecting via how people feel is such a gift for humans. Reaching the point of an exchange where we go "hey, you feel kinda this way too? I thought I might have been the only one" is cathartic and fulfilling. People should be able to do this more often.
As I thought about this more, I think this feeling can also be summarised as summer forlorn. A preemptive sadness that what is there to be enjoyed will also invariably pass and be lost to time.
forlorn: desolate or dreary; unhappy or miserable, as in feeling, condition, or appearance.
Do you feel this at all when seasons change?
Full credit to this person for coming up with term and making me actually putting this into words. I think attaching a term or definition to this also helps me process where these feelings are coming form. You know who you are and I hope you can finish the song related to this one day!↩