With summer too quickly over, again, do we really have to look forward to the election?

I find that it bothers me every year about this time, more and more, actually, as I get older. The problem is this: I blink, and the summer is gone.

It never used to be like this, as far as I can remember.

Did I have fun during the summer months? Sure I did. I went to concerts, like my favorite, Jimmy Buffett - twice. I hit street festivals, wine tastings, baseball games and museums. I attended a few barbecues and parties. I took friends to my parents’ cabin in Wisconsin for a weekend and visited relatives in Florida. When I look at the big picture, it seems like I should be content.

But it’s never enough.

My big, seemingly annual plans to take advantage of everything the city has to offer, to truly attack the summer and never look back to have to say “I should’ve,” seem to fall by the wayside these days. But I’m not alone. It happens to others I know.

I’m certainly busy with work, publishing a pair of magazines. I know that has a lot to do with it. And I’m working on getting better organized and more efficient to free up more play time. But let’s face it, as we get older, the time spent sleeping in, the time spent just hanging out with friends and family, the time reserved for doing the little things in life that bring us pleasure, whether it be sitting in a beer garden, playing volleyball on North Avenue Beach, catching a play or finishing that book you started six months ago, seems to diminish. Rather quickly.

As a writer and avid reader, I subscribe to five magazines, and my condo currently looks like a warehouse. Dozens of unread magazines are ganging up on me. I may begin wearing one of those Life Alert necklaces in case one of the stacks ever falls on me.

My golf clubs have been used as much as Tiger Woods’ lately, though not as impressively.

I haven’t been home to visit old friends and family in far too long.

I still have all these things I want to do in the city as well. This was to be the summer I didn’t look back with reservations, much like last year, and the year before that.

And now summer is almost out. I noticed this recently when shorts didn’t quite feel right when I walked outside the other day. The air is turning a little crisp, a few leaves are changing and tears are running down my cheek. I feel like a school kid, knowing the school bus will be back out in front of my house on Monday.

Instead of a new Trapper Keeper or Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox, football is the main thing I have to look forward to as the seasons change now. It’s certainly not the upcoming presidential election, with which I’ve grown weary already. And what’s scary is, we have more than a month and a half of bombardment yet to come.

I’m sick of seeing the four wave to crowds, sick of the word “change,” sick of hearing people think that drilling off our own shores are the simple solution to everything. Believe me, I realize the gravity of this election and how widespread the ramifications are, and I’m willing to bet I read and watch more political coverage than most people my age. But when you’re force-fed news and updates of this election for two years, even an interested and informed member of the voting public can get tired.

Is John McCain really the “maverick” he’s labeled to be? Yes, I appreciate what he did for his country and the fact he has viewpoints that span across party lines (like the vast majority of Americans), but does a maverick vote with George Bush 90 percent of the time during his time in office? Does a maverick have such lax enforcement of illegal immigration in a boarder state? At least he picked a straight-shooting, waste-cutting governor for vice president who has an 80 percent approval rating.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, seems to vote in the Senate only slightly more often than I do. He writes memoirs like a champ though. He is an eloquent speaker, a charismatic fresh face, but with less than two months to go before the polls open, it bothers me that I have yet to learn more of his policies, what he truly believes will help “change” this country rather than just reiterating what is wrong with it now.

I want more than two political parties too, but that’s an argument for another day.

It all gives me a headache. And that’s part of the problem. With all we leave behind as this summer comes rapidly to a close, all that we didn’t get done or enjoy as much as we planned to, we have more election news to look forward to this fall. Great. Thank God for football.

Trent Modglin
Publisher
The Real Chicago
Trent@TheRealChicago.org

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