Signs of Spring
8/2018: Maggie w/ 12th grandchild, Maya Rae. ~ 10/19: Maggie's 1st great grandchild is due.
Life is restless, isn't it? It's never stagnant, but always moving, always changing. Same for me. I'm restless. I feel change coming, but I don't yet know what it is.
In nature the restlessness builds until life, in the form of spring, must break through. Is that what's happening with me right now? I'm not sure.
I feel it, too
The restlessness of nature here where I live (in Cortland County, New York State, wine and dairy country) reaches a breaking point that turns winter into spring. I feel like I'm going through that process too. There's a restlessness in me that is stirring me and pushing me and generating new ideas and new desires, some of them in directions far from the one I'm used to. Maybe I want to help up and coming writers to hone their craft. Maybe I want to help local businesses master social media. Maybe I want a retail shop with items that blend wellness with magic, with private rooms for readings and reiki and maybe a little yoga. There are so many things I want to do!
With nature, I can see the signs
The tips of the trees on the snow-covered hilltops that surround my home, are red with new life. The poplars are budding visibly, as are some of my smaller trees and shrubs. Soft as velvet, pale green sections are emerging from the ends of every branch on every spruce tree. They'll lengthen to several inches and stay just that soft for a while. I love to touch them, actual newborn needles, all soft and delicate against my fingertips. It's the only time evergreen needles are so soft you want to pet them.
The red-winged blackbirds have returned. Well, a few of them have. I spotted a pair of males today, their shoulder patches kind of a dirty tan. I was so happy to see them, I forgot I had my phone right in my pocket, and didn't get a picture, but I will! Soon those patches will turn bright red, and every treetop will have a blackbird perched on high, shrugging his red shoulders and chirring his mating call. That's the sound that says spring to me most, when I go outside and the entire world seems filled with those calls. Here, just listen to this one, and you'll know what I mean. In spring, that sound is everywhere around me, where I live. It's not a pretty call, but to my ear, they might as well be shouting, “SPRING! SPRING! SPRING!” (This is not my backyard.)
With nature, I know what's going to happen.
I watch all this and wonder why my own life patterns can't be as predictable. Or maybe they are and I just have yet to recognize the pattern. I feel this restlessness, this stirring of something new from way down in my subconscious, a longing for something I can't identify. And maybe it's just cabin fever, and it will all be fulfilled once I can get outside and play in the dirt and meditate by the stream, and bask in the sunlight. Or maybe it won't. Maybe it will remain and I'll have a whole new business a year from now. I just don't know yet.
I know what I don't want…
That's always the first part of the puzzle, knowing what you don't want. What I don't want is to have to spend most of every day online. The sitting, the repetitive motion, the backlit screens are giving me physical repercussions that are not fun. I don't want to spend so many hours working and so few playing. The whole point of working is to earn an income, but if you never enjoy the income you earn, life is just passing by, un-enjoyed, un-basked in, un-appreciated, really.