Is it weird that I love the dark cold days of winter?

Sure, by mid March we are depleted and over it, but this time of year? Late fall? I can’t wait for life to slow down.

I have always been completely inept at rest.

Racing against time to get take it all in, to get it all done. Mind buzzing. Too exhausted to sleep.

I rely on being forced to slow down by the frozen dark. A snow day.

Oh my goodness, a snow day. We don’t get enough of them here, not the real kind where everything is shut down so all there is to do is stay home and read a book or marathon Netflix. Whatever’s your jam. Because here, just South of the permafrost, half the year is a snow day. We push on.

And of course, now work is always right in your laptop or on your phone.

So sick days then. When your system collapses, run down, a passing virus, a migraine or maybe something chronic. You’re so tired you just have to stop.

Honestly, wouldn’t it be better to just rest?

I think a lot of women I know can relate to this. And then they develop an autoimmune disease, or debilitating anxiety, or bone deep fatigue. And suddenly coffee is not enough to push through.

But I’m over it. I love being busy, but I also love quiet time. And, duh, I’ve finally figured out that I need to prioritize that too. It seems so cliche, SLOW down. Everybody’s talking about embracing the slow life. But everybody’s only talking about it because our lives are not structured for it, and it really is what we need. We just can’t figure out how. We are in the habit of being too busy.

But the to-do list will have to wait. Boundaries need to be drawn. New habits formed. Because I can’t rely on the dark and frozen, impossible days of winter, or the complete breakdown of my body and mind to finally stop and just be.

We got an intense snow day this week. Sudden Winter. And I’m grateful for the precipitation after a droughty Fall. But our neighbours to the West in BC are facing disasterous rainfall, flooding, landslides, washed out highways. Stranded, evacuated. It’s devastating.

This is the environmental parallel, our misguided obsession with busy-ness, with growth. Consumption. Waste. Forcing the climate out of balance. It’s the macro effect of what we are not getting right. We need to do less, consume less. Slow down.

We all know it, but we compulsively charge ahead.