I so desperately want to be cozy. Maybe it’s the heat or working in tech where things are sleek and the love of minimalism bridges on obsession, but I want to held by my environment.
I want to feel simple joy. I want to feel aimless happiness against the breeze of a warm afternoon in the summer where I forgotten what day of the week it is.
I’ve gotten ahead of myself.
Cozy is easy in the fall. A sweater that’s a little too large in front of a fire. A hot chocolate. Holding someone’s hand in your pocket to keep it warm.
Easy.
Cozy is harder in the summer. It’s too hot to wear wool. I mean it’s currently BRAT summer and that’s super fun, but kind of the opposite of cozy. In a season where our bodies are on display and there is such pressure to carpe our diems, how do we find the slowness necessary for cozy?
I don’t have an answer, but I do have ideas.
Going to a movie in the middle of the day that’s too hot to be outside in a city feels summer cozy. Reading by a river with your feet dangling in the water feels summer cozy. Campfires and whisky for two poured into camp cups feels summer cozy. Smores. Bike rides. Park beers. All summer cozy.
So it may not come easy, but it’s out there. It may not fall into your lap like it does in the fall, but it’s out there.
Like the lingering heat in the evening, summer cozy is found in the ways the season forces us to slow down. To stay a while. To enjoy where we are.
Or maybe I’m trying to find a way to cope with my bout of summertime sadness. Or just normal run of the mill depression that pops up for a few weeks after I drink too much.
Maybe both are true. For my sake, I hope summer cozy exists. Maybe I need it to exist. I need slowness and safety to soothe my anxious brain and self loathing. Cozy, to me, is the permission to exhale and sink into something, even for a time.
I think for something to be cozy, you have to make it cozy. You have to slow it down, enjoy the simple pleasures of something, and that has to exist outside of a Starbucks marketing campaign right?