Summer has a way of offering more time than we know what to do with — and a way of swallowing that time whole before we’ve decided what to do with it. Here are five ideas for this season that have served me well.
1. Eat Outside Whenever the Weather Allows
Not a picnic. Not an event. Just dinner on the back steps, or breakfast at the patio table before the heat arrives. The difference in how the food tastes, how the conversation moves, how the whole hour feels — it’s disproportionate to the effort involved.
2. Read Something Long
Summer is the natural habitat of the long novel, the sprawling biography, the collection of essays you’ve been putting off. Not a podcast. Not a summary. The kind of reading that requires you to remember what happened two hundred pages ago. The kind that changes how you see things when you put it down.
3. Call Someone You Haven’t Spoken to in Too Long
You know who I mean. You’ve thought of calling three times already this year and didn’t. The summer gives you the margin — take it.
4. Learn Something With Your Hands
Bake something that requires technique. Plant something. Fix the screen door that’s been loose since March. There’s a particular satisfaction in doing physical work that has a visible result, and summer is generous with the time to pursue it.
5. Let One Evening Be Completely Unplanned
No dinner reservation, no itinerary, no open tabs. Just the evening, and whatever it becomes. In my experience, these unplanned evenings tend to become the ones worth remembering.
None of these are large. That’s the point. Summer doesn’t require grand gestures. It mostly requires permission — permission to slow down enough to actually be in it.