The weather in Chicago sucks but at least there are real seasons (there’s only one in SoCal where I am from.)  Here’s a thought about seasons.

Everything gets old after a while. No matter how much you love it at first, after a while you are bored. So you stop doing it.  But then after time passes and you haven’t done it for a while it gets some novelty back and you are willing to do it again.  So you tend to go through on-off phases with your hobbies and activities.

But some activities can only be fun if enough other people are doing it too. Say going to the park for a pickup soccer game.  There’s not going to be a game if nobody is there.

We could start with everyone doing it and that’s fun, but like everything else it starts to get old for some people and they cut back and before long its not much of a pickup game.

Now, unlike your solo hobbies, when the novelty comes back you go out to the field but nobody is there. This happens at random times for each person until we reach a state where everybody is keen for a regular pickup game again but there’s no game.  What’s needed is a coordination device to get everyone out on the field again.

Seasons are a coordination device.  At the beginning of summer everyone gets out and does that thing that they have been waiting since last year to do. Sure, by the end of the season it gets old but that’s ok summer is over.  The beginning of next summer is the coordination device that gets us all out doing it again.

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