Ooooh I love this season.
I love it when it gets dark early, the pavements smell of earth and there are still enough leaves to kick at the side of the road.
I think it’s partly because I am at my most productive after dark, when I feel like I’m not wasting the precious sunlight by being inside.
We are on the out from Samhain season and on the way into Midwinter. I see Samhain is the great ending of the year and the baby beginnings of the new. Like a plant, the seed of the new year is planted at Samhain, but the shoots don’t start to show until Midwinter.
I’ve always imagined this time of year as a tween-time (as in in-between tween rather than I-love-Justin-Bieber twelve year old tween), a kind of yearly black hole and blank space waiting for Midwinter as the days slowly grow ever darker. I figure this tween-ish vacuum transition season is the best time for banishing and clearing the decks for the change you want to manifest in the solar year, and a tippitty-top time for planning stuff and putting in some quality divination time.
The focus of winter spiritually is stillness. I love the stillness of winter, the season of cold, crisp, bracing air. I love looking outside at the cold weather and spending quality time at my altar praying, meditating, or doing me some tarot while wrapped in a blanket.
We are working our way towards that. For now though, it’s time to banish and make plans. What do you want to bury before the sun is reborn?
RIght now, I’d just like to survive the madness. This is the time of the year where I would curl up with a good book on most evenings, but somehow I dumped myself in several truckloads of work, and there is not much time for reading. Or sipping hot chocolate. Or much of anything. I get up, write, go to work, return home, doe housework and translate until I cannot keep my eyes open. Why can’T the rest of the world follow my annual pattern? (I wish I was a bear and could go hibernate and rip off the heads of people who come and disturb me.)
Man, that sucks Diandra! I have a few friends stuck in similar situations – it’s the horrible closing time for autumn work projects I suspect. I hope you find some nice sleepy winter time 😀
I love this time of year but am in the same boat as Diandra and have somehow ended up with tons on! Am going to make an effort today to nourish myself and turn off the computer and concentrate on some reading….in bed….even if it is the morning…and the reading is for work!
Hurrah! It’s ALMOST like downtime! 😀
I want to bury all those “shoulds” and stop wasting time bantering with that inner critic. I wish to use the time instead to little by little add more creative “me time” in rather than just creative work time. Of course there is always overlap, and I am hoping to make it more seemless so that it’s for me first and a bonus for my work!
*laughs* – I love this time of year because we’re just past Beltaine and heading straight towards Litha (yes, I know, I’ve ALWAYS got to be different!), so everything’s blossoming and blooming, and the scent chorus of a thousand different flowers fills my nose whenever I go out for a walk (and let me take this moment to give SINCERE thanks that I don’t get hayfever!)
But in six months time, when my land has grown colder and stiller and everything’s retreating back down into itself for a well-deserved rest the way yours is now? I’ll love that too. For many of the reasons you mention, and also just because it’s another way for me to experience the world around me.
Blessings – TANJA
You know, all the seasons are just so exciting, aren’t they? It’s really hard to choose a favourite.
This summer, I was SOOOO thankful that I don’t have hayfever. How much must it suck to have it when all you want to do is be outside, right? 😀
I think this is the first year that I’m not totally grappling with seasonal affective disorder and enjoying the cold and darker days. I’m not sure what shifted (maybe the fact that summer was brutal), but it’s a nice change. I’m with you in that I feel more creative after dark and I’m getting a lot more writing done. Hurrah!!
Hurrah indeed! There’s nothing like darkness to get your cooped up creative juices flowing!