🌹 spring can really hang you up the most?

Hi Reader, 

Happy first day of spring! 🌹 (Or, happy first day of autumn, for my Southern Hemisphere folks! 🍁)

I have always looked forward to spring (my favorite season), but I’ve also noticed that this can also be a difficult time of year.

Early spring (usually the 2-3 weeks before the equinox) energy feels uncomfortably buzzy to me. I start waking up earlier as the sunrise gets earlier, mirroring the outdoor landscape waking up.

This waking-up and coming-out-of-hibernation energy is exciting, as someone who lived in Minnesota, a place with legit winter, for a long time. 

But, it can also can present as agitation and anxiety, as our nervous systems catch up with the change - transitions can be tricky!

Part of me isn’t ready to let go of the winter coziness, and part of me is excited to wake up to spring and new possibilities (perhaps even a new-year feeling), so there’s a tension and a scattered energy happening.

Spring gets romanticized because there's often nicer weather, and many people have negative feelings about winter. But even with positive transitions, there's a lot to process. Coming out of hibernation poses its own challenges and adjustments, and takes a lot more of your body's resources than you realize. (Allergies! )

If spring is actually a tough mental health time for you, it's more normal than you think, and this is good information to have about yourself.

Now that I know that I have this increased anxiety and restlessness starting in early or mid-March, it’s much easier to handle, because I can prepare for it.

I know that my brain may have more excitement about new projects, with less energy capacity and ability to focus on them, and that doesn’t have to be a terrible thing!

If you have similar feelings, you might have to shift your self care practices in order to nurture yourself through this season. You may need different things in the spring than you do in summer, fall, or winter.

Generally, I find anything that feels grounding to be a good practice during this time of year, such as:

• Getting under a weighted blanket

• Putting on a lavender-based essential oil blend

• Reducing sensory stimuli when I feel overwhelmed

• Paying attention to when your energy wanes, and resting when necessary

I have many more suggestions in this PDF, Balancing Spring Energy:

Since this anxious energy tends to make me feel too scattered to focus well on creativity, these practices make it more possible to get in the flow!

I know that I can try to lean into the excitement energy when it’s available, and work in bursts, followed by necessary periods of rest.

I also can anticipate that my brain will want to work on multiple things simultaneously (and maybe frantically), and approach my work plans with more intention, to help me focus on one thing at a time.

There's nothing wrong with you if you feel less energy than you think you “should” during this time of year, or if you feel extra anxious.

Hopefully you can accept that those energies are happening, and be extra kind to yourself. It doesn't mean that you have to stop trying to do the things that are important to you, but maybe you just approach them with a little more ease and kindness - wishing you the best in that!

How do you feel about the transition into spring? How does it affect you and your creativity?

🤩 Share your creative joys! 🤩

From now on, each email will feature a section celebrating my creative joys, and YOURS, too! 

Hit reply to share any kind of creative joy you’re causing or experiencing, and I’ll share it next time! 🤗

Examples of creative joys:

• celebrating a small action you took on a project
• something inspiring you read / heard / saw
• someone else’s work of art
• an item that makes your creative workspace a better place to be

My current joys:

• This 2005 commercial where 250,000 bouncy balls were unleashed down a San Francisco hilly street - pretty magical as long as you don’t ponder the cleanup aftermath!
• Playing Dr. Mario (which I used to play semi-obsessively in college on the original Nintendo) and making a little video of the Chill theme for MAR10 Day, which started a fun discussion about favorite video game music.
• Tiny soul singer Vanessa Imani and her jams with her jazz pianist dad - Three Seconds is a recent gem!
  

Next time this section will be full of more joys, beaming out to you from me and anyone who wants to contribute! 

🕸️ Staying on the good side of the internet 🕸️

• You don’t need all the answers, just a place to begin - Another excellent blog post from Priya Parker, about moving from despair to action.
• Soft Ambition - I liked this Substack post about compassionate productivity’s cousin, soft ambition, by Ayushi Thakkar.
• Dispatch #43: Child's Play - Scattered thoughts about fantasy and pretend - A beautiful piece from Edan Lepucki, whose novels and writing I have loved for a long time.