Leaning into the Season
Now that the weather has truly started to turn where I am, I am really feeling the late fall/early winter vibes. For me, the colder weather and crunching through dead leaves make me think about harvesting. This isn't just about picking the fresh vegetables, but rather also cutting back old vines, deadheading bushes, and getting ready for the quiet and cold season. In years past, this was normally when I would start worrying about trying to finish things by the end of the calendar year so that I could start the new year with a "blank slate." Needless to say, as an adult, one's slate is never really blank. Add in that November and December can be full of social obligations, and I just felt like I was always trying to catch up on work during the busiest time of year.
This year, I am trying something different and leaning into the fall vibes as something separate from winter. For me, this has looked like, trying to sift through my tasks and projects to figure out what matters to me, what I can compost, what I want to finish, and how to maybe clear space for things to just breathe a bit. I have tried a number of different organizational strategies over the last few years and gone through a few major life changes (becoming chronically ill, finishing grad school, etc.) so I have accumulated a lot of half done things. Projects and ideas I was trying on for size as my life fluctuated drastically around me. I found a few things that worked, many more that didn't, and a couple I could tweak. The ideas and projects that didn't work kind of feel like they have been haunting me - an open bullet in my bullet journal, a loop not yet closed. So I have decided to embark on a deliberate sorting process: celebrating my progress for the year (harvesting), acknowledging for the things that didn't work and why (composting), and very loosely starting to make notes on what I want or need in the new year (plans for planting).
An obvious place to apply this process is my collection of articles and videos to watch. Not surprisingly, I love information and little details, so I squirrel away things to read like no one's business. However, unlike a squirrel, who's forgotten buried treasures can turn into trees, mine just stress me out by reminding me of things I have "failed" to do. This year, I am turning this around. I am taking stock of what I have by looking at what I need, not just saving things for no reason. My time and spoons are limited and the backlog has been stressing me out (I have 300+ things saved in my read later app), so I am going through and doing the following:
1. Breaking the project down into manageable pieces - in this case, I am trying to look through 10 things a day, so that I can aim to be done by the end of the year.
2. Each day, I look at 10 things. These can vary in length, so it is just about getting the overall count down by 10 by the end of the day. Within this, I do one of a few things:
Delete things that were time sensitive - attached to past seasons, offers that expired, replays that I missed. All of this without judgement. I am allowing myself to feel sad or frustrated, but also letting myself find some peace in that by not responding in the assigned time frame, I made the choice that something wasn't for me at that time.
Skim the item - checking to see if it is relevant to anything I am working on now. This is for a lot of "how to" articles or headlines that caught my eye
Read the article - likely the next one on the list (to avoid spending all of my time scrolling to decide what to read). These are generally newsletters or longer essays that I have bookmarked for reading and chewing on later. Sometimes I note a quote that is relevant or jot my feelings in my bullet journal to help me see larger trends in what I am interested in or what is resonating with me.
Mark an item as reference - this is for resources I am likely to share with other people or cite later. Sometimes I don't know this when I read it, which is fine, but I have been saving articles so long that I know some of them got put in this app because I want to reference them later.
3. I don't expect perfection. There are days where this is easy and others when I am traveling and it just isn't possible. That being said, there have been days where I have felt miserable and just being able to be horizontal on my couch and read some nonsense articles and tick them off helped me feel like, even though I was too sick to do anything else, I was still working towards something I cared about. Sometimes I fall off the pattern, but I come back because it matters to me. I am not doing this for anyone else, just me, and it is soothing in a way. I am teaching myself that I can chip away at things and that perfection is not necessary. I can show up for myself and do the things that I want to do.
4. Remembering that the task is small, and yet the results are so big. Realistically, it only takes me about half an hour on average (to allow for longer videos to average out the short articles I just delete) to do this. Most days, I read an article or two over tea breaks or while waiting for a bus. It is helping me avoid doom scrolling by letting me read things that intrigued past me - a curated gift to present me. I get to care for multiple versions of myself: the self that was interested and saved the article, the self trying to learn that I am trustworthy, the self that is bored or anxious at the bus stop, and the self that gets panicked by the doom scrolling.
I am still harvesting and composting in a number of areas in my life, but this one really caught me off guard at how it was making me feel. Being able to make progress on a big project in a reliable, but not overly rigid way, has been and continues to be a healing experience.
Does any of this resonate with you? Have you done some sort of harvesting/composting cycle yourself? Do you have any questions about my process so far?
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