Making friends with Winter
My secret formula
Hello! And Happy New Year to you all. Thanks so much for all your comments and likes on my last post, and welcome to my new paid subscribers, too! It was so lovely to see people had subscribed after reading it because it felt like a very personal piece. A few of you asked how bad my vulnerability hangover was—and I did have a little wibble the next day—but then I read all your lovely comments and felt much better, so thank you!
So, in that post, I mentioned I wanted to do some January reflections and setting intentions for the year ahead. I am a big fan of the power of reflecting - on a creative level, it was when I started taking the time to look back over the art I was making that I started to have breakthroughs and leaps forward in my practice - so I know first hand how powerful it can be.
I don’t see January as an arbitrary time to set goals or intentions (or however you want to put it). It feels entirely the perfect time to set goals to me because, much like the summer, it’s a time you have taken a break from the everyday, and stepped off the treadmill for a bit. For me, that is always a time I start thinking about how things are; how they have been; what I want for the next few months... I just naturally start assessing things a bit more. And so it feels entirely the perfect time to stop, take stock and assess how things are going. But rather than doing mad goal setting, instead I think of it as a dusting off, a tidy up, a laying out of tools and saying - what next? I did this last year, and called it a New Year Spruce up1 which I rather like, so my plan is to do a new spruce this year
My plan is to follow much the same as before. I have worksheets for you to join in with it all.
We will start with a reflection over the last year. I don’t need to tell you again how important I find this.
We will then do some visualisation and dreaming - this feels like a really important part of it for me. I need to feel excited about what I am doing, and doing this helps me feel connected and excited about my future somehow.
Finally, We will set some intentions and goals for 2025.
The plan is to do this over the course of January, I’ll be aiming to get a post up per week over January. I like taking my time over this, and I’m excited to spend all of January floating around in a reflecting and hopeful space! If you’re excited to get going, I have set up a special chat for it.
Making Friends with Winter
This is a little bonus post, on the theme of setting intentions that I wanted to share with you to kick things off. It’s for those of you who find the winter months challenging, like I do. Or, I should say, like I did…
I have always been a summer person. I love the freedom that comes with it. Maybe it comes from long summers at school; we always used to go to my beloved Tenby for long holidays over the summer holidays as a child, so perhaps my nervous system associates summer with feeling relaxed? But whatever the reason, I feel in the groove, in a more floaty, dreamy place. I love sitting by the river, lying in grassy meadows, picnics… Ahhh, I am getting carried away, just thinking of it. But winter… I feel, or I should say, used to feel, trapped, confined, weighed down by the darkness. And I do feel that perhaps I genuinely feel vitamin D deficient by the end of winter, and perhaps I am literally lacking in important vitamins and minerals, who knows…?
Anyway, I got to a point a couple of years ago when I thought enough is enough! I can’t go on like this. I had begun to spend February and March (well into Spring) feeling pretty down, and I started dreading it. With the beginning of Autumn (which I love!) would be the dread of what is coming next…! Normally, the approach of Christmas, Halloween, Bonfire Night, Strictly on the telly, are enough to distract me through December, but it is Jauary/February/March that get me. So with this in mind, I hatched a plan.
I like to set my goals using the 3 Rocks method. I have made a whole video about it, which you can watch here. If you want to join in the rest of the New Year Spruce Up, I suggest you do, because it will come up again. It’s only about 10 minutes long, and I have made some drawings to accompany it.
To summarise:
Imagine you have a jar, a bunch of sand, pebbles and rocks. If you put the sand in first, then the pebbles, you won’t be able to fit your rocks in. But if you put the rocks in first, the pebbles can fit in around the rocks, and the sand can fill in all the extra little gaps.
The pebbles are all the little worky things you have to do all the time, like emails, meetings, planning, working on your website or portfolio. Whatever you can quite easily fill your time with if you’re not careful. The sand is all the rest: life stuff, calling your mum, cleaning the bathroom, cooking, washing… the idea is that you set one goal, and then choose three things (these are your Rocks) that if you do those, and prioritise them over everything else - put them into your jar first - then everything else takes care of itself anyway - the pebbles and sand slide in around your Rocks. It’s a super effective way of approaching setting goals or intentions, as I like to think about them.
So, this was my Winter plan, below. I can’t tell you what a big difference it’s made for me. I actually found myself looking forward to Winter this year, as the nights got shorter!
GOAL
To make friends with winter!
ROCKS:
🪨 R1: Staying regulated Focus on keeping my nervous system regulated2
Physically: stay on top of the warm, comfortable clothes, look after aches and pains
Mentally - use my list of glimmers3 to boost my mood if I am feeling low
🪨 R2: Mindfulness and appreciation of the season Cultivate mindfulness of and appreciation for the seasonal changes, especially around nature.
🪨 R3: Reflect: Use the time to reflect, consolidate and learn.
I then brainstormed as many things as I could for each Rock, so I had lots of things to refer to. I have decided to paywall this bit, as some of it feels quite personal.
Side note: I have been thinking about this (reflecting!) and I would like to do some more personal writing about my creative process and projects this year, and I’ve decided to help me feel a bit less vulnerable about doing this I will paywall some of it, so I can go a bit deeper, and feel like I have a bit of private space to do that behind a paywall.
Here’s a bit of a New Year sweetener - to celebrate my month of goal setting, and becasue I will be paywalling a bit more private writing, as an incentive, I have extended my New Year discount until the end of the month. Get 25% off paid subscriptions for a year below!
Some of my notes below are quite anecdoctal and personal to me, but it makes sense to me, so I’m leaving them in this chatty, more personal list-like form. I kept it all on a pinned note on my phone on the Notes app, which was super helpful, because I could look it up easily if I wanted to.
BRAINSTORM NOTES:
🪨 R1: Staying regulated
Investing in good winter clothes. Layers that don’t feel bulky
Focus on keeping warm. Make it a priority. Don’t spent the winter cold.
hot baths!