a season for slowing down?

Sometimes, it's helpful to know what's coming around again.

I know in advance that Christmas drives me crazy with unrealized ideals, so I can plan for that (well, I could plan for that, in an ideal world - heheh, irony intended) by doing my shopping early, scheduling times of quiet meditation, planning meaningful family traditions, etc.

Spring allergies have often kept me indoors and miserable, so I can plan ahead to take medicine or herbal remedies (or whatever I think might work that year).

When a birthday is approaching, I can take steps to be prepared with a cake, presents, a special meal.

Thanks to this blog, now I am beginning to catch on to another pattern.  I evidently suffer from Early Spring Slump.  Not an official diagnosis as far as I know, but pretty real in my experience.

For the last couple of months I have been fighting against discouragement, despair, tearful mornings, fatigue, hopelessness, self-criticism, discouragement, despair, tearful mornings, fatigue, hopelessness, self-criticism, discouragement ... repeat ad nauseum.

But because I blogged about it last year, when I began to sink into it this year, it felt just familiar enough for me to think, "hmmmmmm...." before collapsing on the sofa for a nap, yet another unfinished project silently accusing me from the corner.

As you may have guessed from reading this blog, life for me doesn't always sink in until I've written about it, which I guess means that vast quantities of my life's hours are lost in Never-Never Land, since who has time to write it all out? not me; I've got naps to take.  So despite having this Early Spring Slump for years, I usually chalked it up to various other random causes including allergies, postpartum blues, and major life changes.  It took blogging about it to wake me up.

Realizing that it's a cycle doesn't exactly make it enjoyable, but when I read last year's post about it, it did give me hope that it will end (which I kind of suspected, anyway, since I remember a respectable amount of productivity happening between then and now...namely the unfinished projects actually having gotten started).

All the helpful advice in the world (and believe me, I have gotten some) hasn't gotten me jumping for joy between January and March.  I just plow through.

Kind of like I'm doing with this blog post, actually.  I don't see a tidy end to it, but I assume that, like this early spring slump, it will somehow end.  Last year my slump evidently ended around (or before?) my post on March 22.

I've got two days.