When the Sun Stays Too Long: Reflections on Summertime Depression

It always surprises people when I tell them that summer is the season I struggle with most. There’s this collective image of summer being carefree, joyful, full of barbecues and sunshine and bike rides. And as a kid, I loved it—the freedom from school, the summer movies, the long days of doing nothing. But somewhere along the way, summer shifted for me. It became too much.

Too bright. Too long. Too loud.

The Discomfort of Lightness

As someone who finds comfort in dim rooms, early sunsets, and a soft hoodie pulled over my head, summer feels like an unwanted spotlight. The constant heat, the expectation to be out and doing, the lack of quiet corners—it all builds into a kind of emotional friction. There’s a strange guilt in feeling low during a time the world tells you should be your happiest.

Living in Austin has magnified this. The summers here are long and relentless, and I often find myself retreating inward—not in a romantic, reflective way, but in a survival mode. The heat becomes isolating, not just physically but emotionally. It’s like a reverse winter. Everyone is outside and active, while I’m inside trying to protect my nervous system.

Seasonal Depression, Flipped

Most people associate seasonal affective disorder (SAD) with winter—and rightfully so. But summer-pattern SAD is very real, and it’s less often talked about. While winter SAD tends to be marked by low energy and craving comfort, summer SAD can show up as agitation, restlessness, anxiety, and trouble sleeping. It’s more like being overstimulated than depleted.

And for creatives, that internal restlessness can feel even more complicated. I want to make, but my nervous system is taxed. I want to feel inspired, but everything feels flattened by the sun.

Ambient Music as a Place to Retreat

This is one of the reasons ambient music has become not just my practice but my refuge. Ambient music offers a kind of internal season—a soft, cool, slow space I can return to even when the external world feels like too much. It gives me permission to slow down, to dim the lights, to exhale.

Many of the tracks I’ve made during summer months were born out of this exact feeling—not an escape, but an effort to build a space I could feel safe and soothed in. A sonic shelter.

If summer ever feels too intense for you, I’ve curated a playlist called Meditative Wind Down, which includes ambient pieces designed to ease the nervous system and cool the temperature of your thoughts:

🎧 Follow & Save Meditative Wind Down

Letting Yourself Feel It

If you also struggle with summer—whether in a small way or a deep one—you’re not alone. There’s no season that fits all of us. And just because the world feels bright and fast doesn’t mean you have to match it.

Your experience is valid. Your energy is valid. And your need for slowness, shade, or stillness is sacred.

Until next time,
Your fellow human just being.

– Six Missing

Returning Home: Reflections on Family and Self Through Sound

Spending time with family is never just about the visit—it’s about the history, the patterns, the quiet moments that stretch between conversations. It’s about returning to a version of yourself you thought you outgrew, only to realize how much of it still lives in you.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how being around family can be its own kind of meditation. There’s something about sitting across from your parents, seeing your mannerisms reflected back at you, hearing a familiar tone in someone else’s voice—and realizing, that’s me too.

The Mirror of Family

Being home—physically or emotionally—means stepping into an environment that shaped you. It can be comforting. It can be challenging. Often, it’s both. You catch glimpses of the traits you’ve carried forward: maybe a stubbornness, a certain way of handling stress, a deep sense of care. And then there are the things you’ve tried to unlearn, the parts you’re gently rewriting in yourself.

It’s not about judgment. It’s about awareness. Noticing the echoes of your upbringing in your adult self and asking, Do I want to keep this? Or do I want to shift it?

The Practice of Patience

Family dynamics aren’t always easy. Old stories resurface. Roles we thought we shed reappear without warning. But what I’ve learned is that these moments, though sometimes difficult, are invitations—to slow down, to respond rather than react, to extend the same compassion we offer to strangers back to the people who raised us.

In that way, being with family becomes a practice, one not so different from meditation: sit with it, breathe through it, notice what comes up, and let it move.

How Ambient Music Mirrors This Process

There’s a parallel for me in the ambient music I create as Six Missing. So much of ambient composition is about space, patience, and reflection. There’s no rush. No hard start or stop. Just the slow unfolding of texture, the subtle shifts that ask you to notice rather than chase.

Just like in family relationships, there’s room for tension and release, for moments of dissonance and deep harmony. Sometimes a single drone or melody line will repeat and shift so slightly that you don’t realize it’s changed until you’re fully immersed in something new.

Creating this kind of music has taught me to listen more closely, to be with what’s present without needing to fix it—a skill that’s just as important when navigating the nuances of family.

An Invitation to Reflect

If you’re spending time with family, or even just thinking about your roots, I invite you to approach it like you would a quiet piece of music:

• Pause. Notice what emotions arise.

• Listen for what’s beneath the surface. Not everything is loud or obvious.

• Allow space. Sometimes just being together is enough.

And if you need something to help ease into that reflective space, I’ve curated a playlist called Meditative Moments, full of ambient tracks that hold space for introspection, including subtle field recordings and gentle textures that mirror these emotional landscapes:

🎧 Follow & Save Meditative Moments

Whether you’re sitting with your parents at the kitchen table or alone with a memory, know that the process of noticing, reflecting, and evolving is sacred. And you don’t have to rush it.

Until next time,
Your fellow human just being.

• Six Missing