Well, it’s January thirty-first, and you know me: Little Miss Goals and Dreams and Plans and Schemes!
Almost every January for so many years that I’ve officially lost track, I write yet another essay about how goals and New Year’s resolutions get a bad rap, and why the mainstream take on new year/new you, or its twin: new year/old me, is all just a set up to get you to give up, so you stay nice and comfy in your rut, usually before you flip your calendar to February.
Since those essay abound in my archives and they’re all still good and valid and witty and engaging, she said, about her own writing, I’m not going to write another one: you can just go back every year for about the last ever.
This year, I’m going to write something a little different, because, well, this past year has been a little different, and so, I’m a little different. Changed, even.
To be honest, I think the content of this post has been slowly coming along for a longish while now, really. It’s been swirling around me ever since I started doing the December Intentional, which is eight years ago now (and you’re cordially invited to this year’s). For this many years, I’ve had all these ideas that seemed to be mutually exclusive of each other, which I couldn’t articulate clearly to anyone, myself included. Because I couldn’t quite intellectually fit them together—the seasons and healing and being a driven person—I just didn’t. But something has creaked and shifted and now I can.
I’ll be sharing more on that discovery in the coming months, but for now, this brings me to Winter and January and New Year’s resolutions, and the way they obviously go together, and the way I am now thinking that maybe, just maybe, they actually don’t. Not the way we traditionally have been combining them, at least.
What I want to talk about this January is winter and what that really means, and what we should actually be doing during this dark time of year, which is: wintering. It sounds obvious, but clearly really isn’t.
Here’s the thing: by New Year’s Day, when you feel like you should already be diving into your big, hairy, audacious goal(s), we have only actually been in winter for about ten of the approximately ninety days of the winter season. That’s just eleven percent. January 1st is way closer to the beginning of winter than it is to the season’s middle, let alone the end. Heck, the end of January isn’t even halfway through winter. No wonder people struggle with getting through winter to spring. It’s a long time to hold out for somewhere we aren’t yet.
We need to calm down.
I get it: it’s dark out. The nights are long. We’re probably not getting enough vitamin D, fresh air or exercise. Seasonal Affective Disorder is real, and it can also be made a lot worse by constantly being disappointed that we’re still in winter (on account of how it’s still—wait for it—wintertime).
It’s literally The Dead of Winter, as the saying goes. It’s a little weird to expect to be full-throttle, pedal-to-the-metal PRODUCTIVE and ON A ROLL and IN ACTION and ACHIEVING, in the dead of anything, let alone winter when Nature is very clearly telling us and everything else that lives and breathes and grows to take a good long nap. She’s even considerately turned the lights all the way down and has been preparing us for many months to rest and recover, to literally and figuratively go inside and reflect.
Mother Nature has been giving us ample 5-minute warnings for months now, that bedtime was approaching, but here we are, still revved up and swearing we aren’t tired, and can we stay up longer, pleeeease?
Every year, I see tender green shoots popping up earlier and earlier, and little buds starting to burst sooner, I swear, than any year before, which lets me worry about The State of The Planet, as if a) I have nothing else to worry about, and b) my worrying will actually solve or otherwise impact climate change.
When I see those little tendrils poking their heads up from their cold earthy beds, I think, “Oh no, you’ve popped up too soon! The cold is really just beginning! Winter’s not over, it’s just started and you’re going to freeze!” This is the equivalent of people setting (likely unrealistic) New-Year-New-Me goals for their well-being and businesses, going all out for a few weeks (if even), then burning out, getting injured, bored, or uninspired by the lack of immediate tangible results, giving up and going back to business as usual (New-Year-Old-Me).
When we see those early shoots, I hear everyone get so excited, eagerly reassuring each other that the days are getting longer and that Spring is most definitely on her way. This is not untrue: the days are getting longer after the Winter Solstice, which means that Spring is coming next, but it’s that “next” that’s really important.
Spring, with all her promise and bursting forth and excitement and new growth and budding blooms and blossoms, will come in her own time, which is after Winter’s rest.
But if we let Winter be winter, how would we achieve our goals?
For several years now, the pace and pattern of Nature have been calling to me, louder and louder. This year, especially, I’m listening to her. I mean, Nature achieves her goals every year, so maybe she’s onto something.
I’d like to make the argument that January is NOT the time of year to jump head-first into your big goals and get traction on your projects. It’s not the hit-the-road-running time of year that I used to think it was.
What if, instead of getting high on GOALS and ACTIONS and PUSHING and WINNING, we slowed way down? What if we used Winter to rest, and in the quiet and dark, we slowly luxuriated in the dark, and deliciously crafted our plan for the year ahead? Or if you already have your plan, what if the Winter season was the warm up for the big show, as opposed to the big show itself? The season where you test out and tweak the gentle and unceremonious-but-ritualized creation of the small-or-even tiny steps and half-steps that build up our strength for the season of blossoming ahead?
I believe that what we should be doing during winter is wintering. I mean, it’s right there in the name. Wintering is the act of being in a season of cold and dark. A season of fallow: rest and recovery, of reflection and planning. Wintering is indulging in comfort and hibernating, not fighting and pushing.
Now obviously this is going to be more relevant if you live in the northern hemisphere, as I do, as opposed to the southern hemisphere where you find yourself in the early days of summertime in January. But, if you’re up here, in Winter’s frigid beauty, bundle yourself up and go outside and shake off the snow on the branches. You’ll see that Spring’s buds are already there: resting, waiting, just being in all their tiny glory. They aren’t growing bigger yet, because they know their branches need to send their energy down, down, down, into their roots, deep into the earth, gathering the microscopic ingredients and energy essential for the bursting and blooming in the coming months ahead.
Pulling energy upwards in any part of winter, when flash freezing could mean an end to all easrly blossoms and fruit for the coming year, is not the right move. Resting and dreaming in the dark is what is called for right now, focusing on our roots to make our foundation strong and flexible for whatever the coming year will bring.
When I think of wintering this time of year, I can feel my whole body relax. From my nervous system to my very soul, I actually feel more anticipation for my year, knowing I don’t need to be somewhere already, or that I’ve already missed a milestone deadline that I wrote down but didn’t really plan to meet, because I’m tired and it’s winter.
By the way, I’ve been speaking about Winter the season, but there are so many different kinds of winter: sometimes, we’re in a personal cycle of winter that has nothing to do with the calendar or the weather outside our window, and instead the season in which we’re finding ourselves in our lives. From one long winter—a tough season we wish would only last three months, but is lasting longer, requiring more rest and recovery, more grace and patience—to the winter of our own lifetime, as we near our Time’s end.
What matters isn’t which season we’re in, but how willing we are to be in that season, as long as that season takes, without trying to rush ahead to the next, or more appealing one.
Right now, I’m wintering. For really the first time ever, this January has been all about resting, gently wiggling my project fingers and toes, looking at slowly bringing the timelines, milestones and actions into focus for my projects, while the only real action I’m committed to this month is creating small, consistent and ritualized structure to my life, making this season feel luxurious and enjoyable and delicious. I cannot fail at this timeline before I’ve started, as I so often have in Januarys gone by.
Wintering is letting me savour winter, as opposed to rush or even just get through it.
Winter is exactly where I’m meant to be.
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