For many people, the dawn of Spring triggers a desire to clear out the closets and tidy up the home; to get everything nice for the arrival of better weather.

Fall is my Spring, because I have an abundance of allergies, burn easily in the sun, and melt as soon as the mercury surpasses 70 degrees F.

So now that the clocks have fallen back and the sun is only grudgingly peeking above the horizon, I’m dusting and organizing, donating and discarding, keeping the windows open all day (inviting that brisk breeze to clear away the stale, too-warm air of my apartment), and generally feeling a lot more awake and alive.

I have a biological inclination toward colder weather, then, but I also prefer layers of clothes over shorts and t-shirts (more pockets!), and for some reason I prefer warming myself up over trying to cool myself down—warm socks, a sweater, and a heater by my feet feels luxurious, while stripping down and running the AC all day just to maintain basic brain function and not sweat myself into a withered husk feels like a burdensome, wasteful chore.

There’s also something about the encapsulating nature of the colder, darker months that makes them feel riddled with potential.

We’re bundled up in our clothes and in our homes, and that offers the opportunity—a socially acceptable opportunity!—to pull back from interactive expectations and just read a book, do something we want to do at home, not go anywhere if we don’t want to.

We’re allowed to be antisocial without it feeling weird, in other words, but that also means when socializing happens, when we get together with others in public or at home, those get-togethers feel more intimate. It’s almost like choosing to engage in this way is more meaningful, because we’re not opting for the default summertime bustle, we’re going out of our way to be collaboratively bundled with other human beings.

This is all very hand-wavy, I know, and it might just be me who feels this way.

But I bring it because I believe colder seasons provide an excellent opportunity to develop and reinforce our friendships and other relationships, in part because the nature of our gatherings change in a meaningful way.

It can be more difficult to force ourselves to do, to engage, to enjoy the company of others (and to gift them our company). Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is very real and very potent, as is the urge to just wrap oneself in a blanket, eat some stew, and stream some kind of police procedural because surely it’s too cold and dark to do anything else.

I would propose, though, that right now, this very moment (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least), is exactly the right time to begin integrating some collaborative coziness into our lives.

We’re just now stepping into this new, wonderfully chilly, ill-lit, coat-swaddled reality, and if we enter it with concrete social intentions—adding some regular meetups and get-togethers with our friends to our calendars, now, before the lack of sunlight and gravity of the couch fully overtakes us, for instance—we stand a much better chance of enjoying the full, healthful, connective benefits of this time of year, rather than just the solitudinous, blanket-burritoed ones.

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