The opposite of me, or A Winter's Tale

Things I am not: High flying and fancy free.



See.

That was most certainly not me earlier today.

Sugar Glider related antitheses aside, I am seriously addicted to the winter weather. Rather, I am reveling in the sheer winter-inspired life style the current weather is affording me. Hermetic by nature, I love excuses to stay indoors and snuggle up to my laptop or a book, or even the hanging of my new curtains with social justification on my side. I love wintery foods: pumpkin, gingerbread, nutmeg and all those intense carb and meat centered creations that one craves as a hibernation catalyst. Soup looms large with me this time of year: steamy, full of little chunks of tasty, even the bowl it comes in warms me to the core.

In the winter I listen to books on tape. I stay home and work on craft projects. I play solitaire. I do a million things that all let me sit alone in the quiet of my house and free the mind to wander through the halls of introspection. It’s this time of year that I get the most ideas for new shows, the seeds of things that the productive spring months will foster, nurture and grow beyond shadows and flickers. It’s also the time that I reconnect with what I’m doing now, checking in with life as it stands and sort of just noting what’s there.

Winter is never really a time of action-packedness for me. It’s about stillness and preservation of one’s energies, be they mental or physical, because there’s less to go around. I try not to start big new endeavors in winter, in part I guess because of the hassle that goes along with winter schlepping, but more so because the short days and chilled air encourages a kind of minimalism. And yet, because I know I tap out around 11pm and can’t run around the clock like the long summer nights seem to always find me doing, I’m more careful with the way I use those hours. When I read, I don’t feel the need to slam through my book to get it done, I can savor the words.

I sometimes get upset with the slow paced-ness of life in the winter months, but lots of experience trying to change the inevitable says the effort is futile. So instead I trust that I will again rev up in the coming months and bask in the semi-lethargy for now.