Yawn…Stretch…

 

Yep, I think it’s official: my hibernation phase is coming to an end.  Right now I’m choosing to ignore the forecast of snow in the future, because at the moment there feels hope that winter might be soon wrapping up.  It’s been over freezing (maybe just slightly, but still..) for several days in a row, and we’ve gained about two hours of light in just over a month.  Today the sun is shining, and although the wind is quite nippy, if you walk on the right side of the street with the sun beating down on your face, you can’t help but feel hope that we may soon be able to call this another winter we survived.  As in past tense…as in done.

I know it’s a little too soon to declare a victory, but I can’t help but note how January was probably the fastest feeling month I’ve ever had in my life.  It’s the oddest thing, but I’ll take it none the less.  I have no idea how or why it felt so quick, being that January is notorious for its agonizing, never ending misery. Yet, Friday just kept arriving and we kept saying we had no idea how the week already went by.  Still, nothing particularly interesting happened in the month of January.

Like I’ve said before, I discovered my artist side lately, so that outlet has certainly filled my days in very satisfying ways.  I would frequently find hours had passed without me even noticing as I’d been so engrossed in a project.  I try to finish a couple pieces a week.  That said, this is also a strange paradox, as is the worst month of winter passing so quickly.  I realize that my days of “finding myself’ and this window in my life of doing things just for the simple sake of personal pleasure is very quickly nearing its end; so, at the moment, I feel a sense of panic to try and squeeze in as much “pleasure” as possible, which in fact kinda steals away from the very “pleasure” part.  I know, mean I know that in just a matter of months, our lives will turn to the complete opposite extreme, and I just need to finish a little more until that happens.  I know, no matter what the outcome of our decisions, these hours of self discovery will be a luxury and not part of my daily routine.  But, I’ve been grateful for it anyway, because in a sense it’s helped me actually treasure this season for the time it’s provided me, and has given me the very excuse I need to stay in and make time for things I’ve always fantasized about having time for.

This will likely sound like the strangest admission ever, I understand that, but I was thinking about how years and years ago I was making a list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime, and one of them was to spend a few months in a cabin (or something of the sort) during the winter in Alaska.  I just thought it would be so cozy to have my family, some games, art supplies, just some very basic essentials, a fireplace, and a few months of solitude and time for personal fulfillment and family bonding.  Then one day this winter, it hit me that I am (in a very strange way) doing just that, fulfilling one of my lifetime dreams.  That really helped me to make peace with the icy sidewalks and early dark afternoons and my feelings that I didn’t actually want to get out in the frigid snow.  This is a pocket of time I have to do something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’ve tried to take advantage of it in the way I would have, had I done the fantasy literally to the letter of how I originally saw it.  And in a sense, even better, because I never imagined a sauna in my original dream

All that said, it’s been fantastic, but minus a few more weeks I might enjoy to finish up a few art projects I’m in the middle of, I’m very much looking forward to the next season.  Season, literally in the sense of the earth’s rotation, and figuratively, as in whatever is next for my life.