Doing the REAL Work of This Time of Year

As we enter into 2024, I've been thinking that one of the challenges we grapple with in the New Year is that we engage with this season as though it's Spring. New Year, New Me! New beginnings, new habits, etc. And then, inevitably, we are disappointed with ourselves because we find we are unable to sustain these changes, these new projects and plans.

I think that's because we are trying to do the wrong work for the season. The reality is that the New Year begins in darkness with long nights and shorter days. This is a time when life has gone underground and we are invited to explore what may be dead and what may be dormant. We have to prepare the soil for spring. This is a time of gestation, not birth, of stillness, not action.

I'm currently reading Jacqueline Suskin's A Year in Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression . She is a poet and writes from the perspective of herself as an artist, but because I believe that our lives are the ultimate creative project, I think we can all gain from a better understanding of the seasonality of creativity. Of Winter she writes:

For these cold months, I reassess my intentions, connect with the subconscious, and recharge my imaginative well. Winter is my time to rest, dream, and get in touch with my sources of inspiration. I find the silence soothing, the hiatus healing, and this tranquility affects the way I approach my desires.

The winter Muse instructs me to refine my visions, study and clarify my direction, but above all else, the season asks me to restore myself so I can come back to my craft with renewed energy. With the information I gain from my inner exploration, I'm able to move into another phase of creative process with refreshed perspectives and fleshed-out concepts.

Winter is a time for restoration, deep contemplation, and for recalibration. The only "resolutions" we should set are those that help us rest and renew ourselves, refine our vision, and re-assess our intentions. How can we prepare the soil for the next season? What needs to die and where do we need to prune by saying "no"? What is dormant for now and might be worth reviving for the spring? What enlivens, inspires, and expands us? What is numbing or pulls us into contraction and smaller versions of ourselves? This is a time for unwinding and letting go of expectations for how we "should" be so that we can get in touch with what we actually want and need.

If we really tune into our bodies, we know in our bones that we have to "push" ourselves at this time of year. We need to listen to the wisdom of our bodies rather than trying to overcome or "push through". We live in a productivity-obsessed culture that devalues this part of the creative process, that tells us that we SHOULD be producing all of the time or else we are no longer valuable. I've come to believe that this is part of what's killing us, this idea that we must always be focused on output, rather than on the internal restoration and reconnection to what enlivens us and supports us in our evolution.

We will have to reclaim this for ourselves because the culture is constantly communicating that to embrace restoration is to be "lazy." We have to push back against this narrative and support each other in remembering that this is a necessary part of the cycle. How might our experience of Winter transform if we let go of the expectation that we treat it like Spring and, instead, engage with it as a season that asks of us something that may be deeply uncomfortable in our culture, but that is ultimately restorative and necessary? And how can we hold each other in this process, normalizing it and letting go of our judgments about it? This is work worth doing. Can we align ourselves with what the season is asking?