How to Actually Enjoy Summer

Joelle Moray
Jun 27
2 min read

(Even when your calendar feels like a tornado of Google invites and guilt trips)

Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried to relax and immediately felt like you were either:

Wasting time
Falling behind
Letting someone down
About to spontaneously combust from the discomfort of not being productive

Congratulations! You’re one of us. A high-functioning, gold-star-chasing, color-coded-calendar-wielding human who deeply craves rest… but also feels wildly allergic to it.

Let me save you some Googling:

It’s not because you’re broken.

It’s because your nervous system thinks doing nothing is dangerous.

I know. Savage.

Here’s the deal:

We’ve been sold a very shiny lie that rest is lazy, slowing down is failure, and if you’re not doing 17 things by 9AM, are you even trying?

So when summer rolls around with its breezy “slow down” vibes, your brain’s like:

“Sounds cute. But what if we spiraled instead?”

And we do.

We make summer “bucket lists.”

We schedule “fun” so tightly there’s no air left in the day.

We turn relaxing into a project.

But what if this summer, we did it differently?

Not like a total personality transplant—just a soft rebellion. A quiet pivot. A baby step toward not losing our ever-loving minds.

Enter: The 5-Minute Slowdown.

No timer. No rules. Just a little rebel move that tells your body: “We’re safe. We don’t have to hustle right now.”

Here’s how it works:

Pick one of the following and do it for 5 minutes. Or for a whole evening.

Lay in the grass and do absolutely nothing. (Yes, nothing. Like a cat. You are the cat now.)
Make & drink your coffee slowly like you’re the star in a Nancy Meyers film.
Put your phone in another room and just…exist. (This one’s not for the faint of heart.)
Walk slowly with a friend while holding coffee, like you're both at the farmer's market in Hallmark movie.
Have your friends over for dinner. And set up a table outside. Allow dinner to take alllllllllll night. Play list is Yacht Rock.