Let’s Catch Up on the First Day of Spring
A recent painting I did (mixed in with colored pencils), imagining our breakfast together.
Hello friend. I write this post as if this is what I’d say if we were catching up over breakfast together. As if we haven’t seen each other for a while because our schedules have been booked as of late, or we’ve been wintering.
How are you? You’d ask, holding a hot mug of coffee, before we took the first bites of our croissants with buttery flakes falling on the tablecloth.
Well, a mix of things, I’d respond.
For some reason, since the year began, I’ve been having a very strong reaction against social media and being online. Maybe it all started with my intense urge to winter, which brings with it compulsions to unplug and reconnect with the natural world around me: the parts I can see, touch, smell, taste, hear—not the world through the screen. I even had the opportunity to do another private retreat by myself, this time at a Benedictine monastery. There was no wifi, no cell reception, not even conversations with other people! Just me, God, a dorm room. After three days of reading, writing, stretching, praying, and hiking, I returned home a new person. My family could see it instantly, I was lit from within.
A part of me is nervous about this hibernation mode I find myself in. With my book set to release in less than a year, I’m doing the very opposite of what I should be doing: growing my platform, creating reels, all that jazz. But no matter how much I try to make myself do it, I can’t. And I know enough from previous experiences to know that when my energy just isn’t there, I shouldn’t will myself to do it.
On the other hand (and this is where the “mix” comes in), there’s an enervating whirl within me to create and organize. I’ve been painting (the image on top is a recent watercolor I did, imagining our breakfast together), finally clearing the dust (literally) that’s been collecting on our curtains for four years, and doing a thing I’m most proud of: putting together family albums!
This is a project I’ve been wanting to do and putting off since I had children. Before having children, I always knew I wanted to create and maintain a well kept and organized family album collection: all the same sized, with the year printed on spine, sitting perfectly aside one another on a shelf and easily located whenever we felt like going down memory lane. After becoming a mom though, this photo album project never happened. The work of it overwhelmed me and I put it off…until last month!
And can I mention off the bat—it was a lot easier than I feared it would be! And man, oh man, did it feel satisfying! My husband and I simply went through our phones and collected all of our favorite photos from the past few years and uploaded them onto Shutterfly (*note: Costco members get a 50% discount). Then, I went through and organized the photos, creating different albums for the different years. Designing the album pages required the most effort and time but once I got the hang of it, the process sped up since I just stuck with the same 3 templates. Also, I only allowed myself to work on this project for thirty minutes a day to prevent burnout. And within a few weeks, voila, the albums were sitting on our bookshelf! The kids adore going through these albums, my parents love them too!
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that if there’s something that’s important to you but the magnitude of the project is preventing you from starting it, start reeeeeeally small. Like, 30-minutes-a-day kind of small. Chances are, the thinking about the project is more overwhelming than the project itself. As my mom used to say to me as a kid who hated doing her homework, “Don’t think! Just do!”
My social media resistance seems like it’s of a different nature though. I can sense my soul wanting to ground itself in the real and be present to my own life as opposed to the illusionary lives of others. I know this won’t last forever and when the time comes to promote my book and share it with the world, the energy will show up for me. For right now however, I’m following the flow, wherever that takes me, trusting I’m being led and I’ll be alright.
As we mark the Spring Equinox today, we enter a season that centers upon renewal, planting new seeds, tending to them and waiting patiently for them to bloom. Tending to them also includes pruning that which no longer serves us or weighs us down. To fully live into the spirit of the season, now, I turn the questions to you.
How are you doing? What’s been going on? No really, how would you respond to this question over our breakfast together?
What new seeds (intentions) are you wanting to plant this spring to harvest in the fall?
What holds you back from planting those seeds?
Could putting in just 30 minutes a day help with the resistance?
And finally, what areas of your life do you need to give yourself permission to prune so you can blossom ever more beautifully this season?
We’d keep talking, of course, musing, digressing, thinking of more things to update one another on. After our multiply-refilled-coffee-mugs emptied save the brown rings on the bottom, we’d end our time together feeling readier than ever to welcome in this new season.