The Thing About Spring...

We made it – we survived another winter. Spring is here on the West Coast and I’m loving it. It was just what the doctor ordered to pick up my spirits after a dark winter.

I’m specific about what seasons I like. Hot and dry summers are not my thing, and even though I’m lucky because the winters here are mild – salt and ice scrapers only sometimes make an appearance – everything gets so colourless and blah. I’m more of an autumn person – the cool, crisp afternoons where the sun skitters through rust-coloured burnished leaves is my favorite time of year. In a close second to autumn comes spring – a zillion colours are around every corner, and there’s a sense of excitement and anticipation in the air, in everyone; we are leaving dark, drab winter days behind.

Spring is a time of beginnings and birth. Everywhere you turn something is growing, blossoming, and regenerating. Lambs run amuck through their fields, mallard ducklings start to waddle across busy streets, and cherry blossoms pose for countless cameras. It’s a time of starting – kind of like starting fresh.

But this year I’m looking at spring as a time for ME to re-start and re-set myself. With it being only just three months into the new year, I figured it’s a perfect time to look back and review the goals and resolutions I made on December 31st . Have I veered off a course I tried to set for myself? Have I achieved anything so far? Or had I simply forgotten what I had intended on doing this year, and allowed external factors to deter my plans? I’m not putting pressure on myself – too high standards and too much pressure can only lead to disaster. But it’s easy to forget about those little goals set at the new year when the novelty of resolutions wears off.

And I know because I’ve done it.

So I’m checking-in with myself and if needed, starting anew. Again, no pressure – but I’m taking the time to re-visit and re-assess what I’ve done or tried to do this year, and maybe start again. Heck, we were fortunate to have a leap day this year (happens only every four years, you know), so it’s an added bonus! It’s an extra day this year for us to accomplish the great things we can all do if we set our minds to it.

We started fresh and new on January 1st, but life is life and we all get busy and forget about these great things we said we were going to TRY to do this year. It’s never too late to start something new – to change. But for some of us who had vowed at the new year to do this and that as well as BE this and that, sometimes we need to sit back part way through the year and see where we’re at. And why not do it in spring, the ¼ mark of the year, when everything is blossoming, blooming, and starting new?

The first day of spring this year was on Sunday March 20th and even though it rained a bit, that didn’t dampen anyone’s springy spirits. On that rainy day I pulled out the list of goals – or ‘intentions’ as I am calling them – I had written out in the new year. And I was pleased with myself. Some things I had actually been unconsciously doing all along (that’s what writing them out does – cements them in your head), and some things I had forgotten about. Seeing those ‘intentions’ – both accomplished and newly ‘remembered’– was just the kick-start I needed. The year is young, all is not lost, and there’s plenty of time to accomplish what I set out to do. Sure I hadn't started a few things yet – and that’s okay. This is what spring is for; a second chance to start fresh. Slowly but surely I'll get there.

So while many bulbs are just starting to poke their way up and out of the dirt – the same bulbs that were in the ground last year and are now taking another chance at another fabulous year of colour and beauty – I too will also be starting anew and taking another chance at doing what I set out to do: to have a fabulous, colourful, beautiful year, and no matter what the season.