The only time I really like summer is when the sun is going down. For most people, summer is this glorious thing to behold. Pool parties with wet footprints adorning the cement, backyard barbecues, and festivals outdoors with the smell of fried chicken and beer. I feel like a vampire when I say I hate the sun, and can I really hate the sun when we’d all be dust without it?

I guess I don’t hate it. But I don’t like the way it instantly turns my left arm red when I’m driving, lasering in without mercy through the driver’s side window. I don’t like the way it beats on my hair and my head, whether I’m wearing a hat or not. I don’t like the way the sun feels on my face. (I think I’m in the minority on that one.) I seek shade wherever I go. This all means summer and I are usually at odds.

I like summer evenings, though. The promise of another day. This one’s over, it’s saluting to us as the sun nestles down into the horizon. It’ll be back, some form of reincarnation, with different things tomorrow. They might even be better.

People ask if I miss San Francisco. In weaker moments, I do. I miss the buzz, the energy, the stepping outside your door and knowing that you really are somewhere indeed. But I spent my days there waiting for something to happen, some cataclysmic change. For anything to catapult me into the next phase of life. I waited for years and felt a centimeter of movement. So I created the shift for myself.

I now see it likely wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Maybe that’s the only way I know I made the right choice. Because this feels cataclysmic. I’m relieved it does.

Beware, beware, beware of winter, these people say. Almost every single person I’ve encountered. I hear it probably once every two days, even in the dead of July. “It’s long and it’s cold.” “You won’t want to be anywhere but home.” “Well, you get used to it. You’ll survive.” It’s like a badge of honor. It’s something you earn to be able to ask: Have you been through a winter here?

That question is the equivalent of the kid I saw tonight riding his bike alone. He was probably 7 or 8. He kept looking back to make sure I was watching as he attempted humble aerial tricks. He must’ve felt he’d gained the right to show off after years of being tethered to his parents on family bike rides, his sister still with training wheels. Finally, he could say: I belong here, and I’m going to show you that I do.

The series of ominous threats regarding winter has me slightly cautious, to be sure. But it also has me curious. For a girl who lives for the comforts of home, for warm lights indoors, for fireplaces and chunky wool throws, for keeping to herself and not really minding the outside world, for tempered solitude, for getting from here to there and then staying put, for bundling up and looking for the sun and then being fine without it, I’ll preliminarily say: I think I’ll be OK.