For at least the 32 years I have been in the art the summer months always seem to mean one thing: Low attendance. I don’t know if its a throw-back to the agrarian lifestyle or WHAT but summer months mean very little new students, and light attendance by existing students.
Lots of excuses are there – the family vacation, the family in town, etc.. But I think the real deal-killer is the heat-based onset of laziness. It happens even to the most OCD individuals among us. Summer heat means it feels better to go home, go out, lay out, or do anything that does NOT involve sweating.
I remember the summer months in Wisconsin – when the studio (nothing even remotely resembling AC) was 98 degrees at 6:20 when we were warming up for class. Even for a skinny eleven year old I found myself ringing wet even before we got into kick drills. The complaining was always a sign of who was going to succumb to their demons and play instead of train. What was interesting was what happened in mid September…
The people who did not come to class found their way back to class as the weather got cool, kids got back to school, and the leaves started to change. The other thing they found was that their skills had lapsed – badly – they were not at the same level they were when they blamed the heat for their absence. What Dad and I found, however, was that our skills were not the same either: they were BETTER. The toiling in the heat, as brutal as it was, created the foundation of skills and discipline that made the high times that much more enjoyable. Enjoyable for us, that is.
The folks who played in lieu of training, in most cases, were highly depressed at how far they had gone in the other direction compared to us in the right direction. This depression led literally all of them to quit. Now, 30+ years later we reminisce about what rank these people would be now, and the health and friendships they would have.
So, do yourself a favor and conquer yourself.. “A man can conquer a million men in battle, but a man who conquers himself, is indeed the greatest of all conquerors.” — Buddha
