Wintering

Making Do and Letting Go

When I announced I’d be keeping a Substack I said I would try to post once every four to six weeks. How’s that phrase about telling God your plans go again? But I’m not bothered by my failure to live up to my own expectations. Certainly not in the way I would have been in the past. Why? Well I had a pretty remarkable winter. Remarkable in the sense that I did not succumb to the seasonal depression that has so often descended upon me in the past. This is partly because I’ve learned some vital tricks over the years (keeping in mind that as someone raised in the south, I was never taught how to deal with the cold). For one it is imperative to take my vitamins B, C, and D. Also, this was the second year in a row I used a sun lamp (highly, highly recommend). And this year I took to heart the midwestern maxim, “there’s no bad weather, only bad clothes.”

But what really changed the game for me was stumbling upon a young Finnish man’s Youtube channel. Normally I am not one for self help videos. I think anyone trying to sell you peace of mind is a likely fraudster. I believe most wisdom can only be gleaned from personal experience. But on a dreary December day while aimlessly scrolling away on my phone my attention was captured by a video title: “12 Nordic Habits For a Calm and Simple Life.” I have always been curious as to how a region that experiences so much cold and darkness could consistently be ranked as having some of the happiest citizens in the world. So I clicked the link* to see if I could glean any secrets to their success.

One of these habits was about fully embracing the winter season. The early sunsets. The persistent chill. It was an idea so simple and obvious that it came across as being almost radical. Usually I have been one to rail against the winter. Demanding it come to an end. Lamented its length and oppressiveness. I’ve tried endless mind games to trick myself into believing it is almost over even on days before its official start on the Solstice. I have treated the winter as an inconvenience and a pest, a scourge to be shunned. And I know many, many people who feel the same way. Summer is the natural order of things, winter an aberration.

Yet this soft spoken Finnish lad completely changed my perspective. Why yes of course! The winter is supposed to be here. It is meant to be cold and it is meant to be dark. Our bodies energy is meant to ebb. This is the natural order of things. Any qualitative attachment to the season is a human invention. It is neither good nor bad. It just is. So meet it as it is. I have foolishly demanded this force that has existed for hundreds of millions of years to conform to my habits and desires. How much more narcissistic can one person get? So for the past three months I decided to listen to the winter.

What this has meant in an art practice kind of way is that I essentially let go of any expectation to create. I may not make art for financial gain, but I am still influenced by the capitalistic (hellscape) society I live in. This society keeps screaming, “produce, produce, produce” at all costs. The machine must be fed. And especially as someone who isn’t making a living out of art I feel even more compelled to create to compensate for the financial paucity of my work. So freeing myself of the need to make anything for a whole season goes against the grain of the world around me. But that choice, in fact, more closely aligns to the cosmic force of the seasons. Winter is akin to sleep. It is important to our overall well being to take a deep rest. The winter is about being still, conserving energy, staying close to our shelter. Struggling against these forces is precisely what has fed my seasonal depression.

I don’t need to toil away at whatever project I have at the moment all season long. Sometimes you gotta take a step back and live harmoniously with nature. A sense of calm, well-being is way more important. As a result, I probably had the most nourishing winter of my life.

*****

All of which isn’t to say I haven’t done anything since December. I’ve been plugging away at my novel sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. I wrote a script for a short film with a friend. (I am unsure where that will go but I greatly enjoyed exercising an old muscle and working in a collaborative way.) I went to my very first jam session and held my own on the guitar. And now with the sun shining a little bit longer I am feeling excited about tackling those projects that have been dormant with me. Time to rise (if I can ever adjust to the recent clock change that is).

*12 Nordic Habits for a Calm and Peaceful Life