I’ll be honest, I dont really know how to start this piece. I haven’t published anything (personal or professionally) in over a year, and my ability to think through what I want to write about, to read, to learn, while teaching has been pretty dismal- I think last school year I read 3 books? Maybe 4?
4 days left. As a teacher we get our summer’s off. It is almost always the first thing that people point out when I mention either the lack of pay, or the lack of PTO for 10 months of the year. “Yeah but, you get your whole summer off.” I planned on writing a lot this summer! On reviving this habit. Instead I have 4 days left of my summer and I am finally sitting down to write an essay.
One of the ways that I want to be a help to myself in my effort to devote time to writing is to lean into sources that I have found to be incredibly deep, instructive, and life giving. One of these founts for me over the last year was a book called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May.
Katherine May
“There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open you, and you fall through them into Somewhere Else. And Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on.”
As 2022 wound down so too did the relationship I had been in for about a year and a half. Silent nights, silent mornings. Apartment listings and tears. I spent my last two weeks of the year moving what little I owned out of her house and into my own apartment. January 4th. I am back in Colorado after spending a week in Ohio with my family. Moved in to my apartment and ready for the kids to come back to school. The night prior marked the official and final ending. I go to my car at 6 am, after spending the night crying, only to find it not where I left it. Numb, stunned, bewildered I dont know where to start to find it, but I know I’ll be late to work. I call my boss (at 6:15) and I dont know if I get half a dozen words out of my mouth before the tears came. My principal is great-gave me the day off, covered my classes and gave me the space I needed that day.
Long story short-where I parked is this are that Denver deems as a “short tow” zone. aka they want it to become a road (not parking) on the dot at 6 am, so they bring tow trucks and parking cop out at 5:45 to wait for the clock to strike. Then they tow the cars that remain to a near by available 2 hour parking spot. But you have to either spend time walking blocks around your neighborhood or wait an hour or so to call the city and find out what intersection they towed your car to.
That was how I rang in my 2023. Crying to my boss at 6:15 am.
This idea of wintering. It’s one I have sat with for a while. I remember listening to Katherine May on a podcast called OnBeing almost a year before that. It is not lost on me the journey of the different parts of this story. The overlapping of the different seasons. One of the first pieces I wrote here was about the seasons of life and how they match up or parallel the seasons we see in nature. Not always a perfect map but we to go through seasons of new life, abundance, a slow decline, and then a wintering. Cyclical. Death brings life. Resurrection. These seasons are seen all over human existence, from our mood throughout the day to the flowers on the street corner. From the global dominating religious stories to the indigenous tribes we leave on the outskirts. It’s this catholicity—universality—that speaks volumes to me about the relevant truth it embodies in our lives. This is what May is tapping into.
I love making lists. From coffee shops in every state found in the U.S. to clothing stores I appreciate to work outs I want to use. Since I have been telling myself for the last year that I needed to “just sit and write.” [ side bar- I wrote a piece almost two years ago called practice more / suck less and its certainly ironic to me that I have distinctly NOT been doing that] Where was I? Ohh yes spending a year procrastinating. I have made a bunch of “drafts” here on Substack with just the germ of an idea for an essay, to aid in whenever I would decided to stop procrastinating, The germ I left for this essay was the quote near the beginning. Falling into these gaps that lead us into the “Somewhere Else.” no no this other place isn’t like Stranger Things. But in our culture of “go, go, go” and “do, do, do” we tend to view our Winterings as this strange place that is working towards our personal demise. Instead of this place of rest, of strengthening. In our seasons where we feel at our worst, when it feels that everyone else is growing, it takes its own kind of strength and courage to to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can.
One last thought on the importance, necessity, and beauty of seasons. One of the things that I really love about Colorado, and where I grew up in Ohio, is that I get to experience all four seasons, and not just on a nominal level. But deeply; the bitter cold and the wind, the fresh, soft snow, the deep vibrant greens after a spring rain, the length of the day during the summer, the crisp crunch of the leaves. I could go on. The beauty isnt just found in the richness of these individual moments but in the blurry moments in between. The early snow while the leaves are turning. The summer rain. When one season is trying to start before its time, before the grasp of the previous has loosened.
Even in Colorado (where people come to ski for 6 months of the year) people complain about the winter. This past one was long, and deep. Bitter, frozen colds. We spent three weeks with multiple inches of snow on the ground. But have you ever thought how sunrises and sunsets seeem to have a little more colour in them during these dark months? Is it the contrast to the length of the day? It actually has to do with the way the colder oxygen, and nitrogen molecules interact with the light of the sun. There is a real reason for the being we find during the winter.
I think life is a lot like this. Seasons come and go in life, whether we like it or not. While there is immense beauty in the losing yourself in each season so much is found in the time in between. When one season is ending and you can’t really tell when the next one begins. Find the courage to look at your strengths and your weaknesses. Everyone’s seasons are set to a different tune.
Thank you for joining this foray into this merriment, love, and sorrow. This view that life holds that ordinary and the unique. The common and the uncommon. Thank you and I’ll see you next Monday.
ℹ️ Read more about Monday’s Don’t Suck here.
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