Toward the next season
Moving incrementally, always thinking about the light and the tasks ahead
I’m ready for that big snow storm we haven’t gotten, but the sun keeps hinting that winter is slipping away. Or maybe it’s just the anticipation of starting seeds, springing the clocks forward, wondering if we should raise another batch of chicks to add to our little flock, setting a date to get help pruning the fruit trees. I still haven’t cut back all the bittersweet vines that are constantly taking over the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s.
I feel myself slowly moving out of the much needed hibernation of the past few months. I’ve really appreciated waking up in darkness and not needing to leave the warm blankets. But the mornings are lighter, now, and, this week at least, I’m feeling the shift away from deep winter toward the next season. As I consider seed starting and garden plans, I remember all of the other projects that I haven’t made time for in these months of rest.
As I wake up to the longer days I wonder if I have squandered my winter months by practicing a song on the piano just once and buying fabric but not sewing a stitch. Last year at this time I really wanted to write more, but it was hard to wake up early and figure out what I wanted to say. Writing a weekly newsletter has been a really valuable way to practice writing as I go and to learn more about myself as a writer.
To make this newsletter happen, I write for an hour or so on Saturday mornings before I go to a yoga class. I find minutes or an hour on weekdays to keep chipping away, trying to transform my ideas from fallen logs into something that has a shape and size that I can explain and articulate. I love carving my thoughts into ideas I want to share and it can be immensely satisfying to patch sentences together, to mix words and phrases until they come together, close to the way I want them to.
Creativity is something that I deeply value and most often my creative outlets are just very practical. Cooking dinner, baking cookies or bread, garden work in the spring and summer, art projects with my kids from time to time. I really believe that simply making something is a creative act and making things by hand is a meaningful way to connect with the world around me.
Before the garden and summer activities take up most of my time, I intend to use or find spare minutes to work on some sewing projects. Maybe this intention will be like my minimal piano playing, but I want to cut the pieces and be able to sew a seam here and there, instead of trying to find hours for transforming fabric into something useful or wearable.
It’s easy to forget that so much of life is incremental. We go through the same days over and over but each one contributes to growing or breaking down just a very little at a time. A sentence, a seam, a few notes here and there; it can seem like not enough, making something happen in spare moments, but I love the idea of doing just a bit and then a bit more.
Warmly,
Anna