A Wintery Life

A wintery life could have one of two meanings depending on how the reader interprets these three words, but these twelve letters like the 12 months of the past year bring a meaning of perseverance to my mind.  As Anamika Mishra once said, “Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration (Good Housekeeping).”  While animals emerge after a cold winter to run through the spring air as if they were celebrating the perseverance of the survival of winter, I too celebrate this spring as if my life was a resemblance of that winter and the fact that I persevered through it all.

The start of my wintery life began in March 2020, it was March 20 to be exact and similar to an early snowfall that caught the wild animals off guard it was a simple conference call that was the snowfall that caught me off guard to start my long hard winter.  That call began my furlough from my dream job and also was like the first dusting of snow with the hopes that it wouldn’t last long.  As the days and weeks went by I began to gather what I needed to survive the winter and prepare myself to be able to emerge when it was over.

The beginning of my ultimate perseverance was how I stayed in touch with not only the teammates I relied on but also how I continued to educate myself and prepare myself to jump back into my surroundings when it all cleared.  I initially began to take continuing education classes online to stay up to date on my profession.  As the weeks and months continued to pass as if I was in a blizzard in the northeast I began to plan for a longer hibernation period by going deeper into educating myself to prepare for a landscape that would be changed after the sudden winter nicknamed COVID-19.

While I continued to apply for jobs with rejection after rejection as if I was shoveling the driveway only for it to snow again as I threw the last shovel full to the side, I had to prepare for the landscape I would encounter after the storm.  I chose these winter months as the perfect time for me to go after a degree in Business Administration.  I entered college for the first time in August 2020 after being out of school for 30 years.  While I continued the failing job search I continued to push through the storm one class at a time, through one full semester and into the second semester.  Now halfway through the second semester and still maintaining a 4.0 GPA my winter is now over and like many I have persevered through it all.

My life is similar to the winter months and has resembled the winters of all regions.  Some parts of my life have been a consistent warm non harsh time that required not much effort to continue on and other parts have been those of the cold harsh upper northeast that through determination and perseverance I was able to come through it.  Like when Yoko Ono Lennon wrote in his lyric that Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance, I have lived the past 12 months as if it was winter and am now remembering my perseverance as it has led me to the job I began in March 2021 just 5 days short of a full year from the furlough that began it all.  My life will always remind me as if I were the season of winter but because of my mindset I am able to persevere through each and every storm that creates that wintery life.

Works Cited

Good Housekeeping. “27 Winter Quotes That Prove the Beauty of the Season.” GH, 19 November 2019, https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/g25250143/winter-quotes/?slide=1. Accessed 17 March 2021.