For years, I would hobble through winter, longingly waiting for the stretched-out warm days of summer, without seeing the beauty and joy that winter holds. As part of my journey to embrace joy, I’ve embraced seasonality too.
No other season laces the world in frost, or provides hours upon hours of darkness for us to rest in. There is no other season where we are so grateful for days where the sky is an open ocean of blue, where our faces can turn like sunflowers to worship the sun, while the rest of our bodies are wrapped and cradled in warming-fibres.
As I embrace seasonality, I find myself in constant revulsion for all the ways the capitalist economy steals our joy. Everything around us - trees, plants, animals, insects - have wound down into a state of rest as a means for survival. Resting takes less energy, resting prepares for the long work of summer. The joy of winter rest has been stolen from us, and it enrages me that we're no longer part of the cyclical nature of seasons. Capitalism has rendered us separate, has developed its own monotonous and relentless cycle of 5 days of work and 2 rests - at all times of the year. It's little wonder many of us feel the sting of deteriorating mental health in winter. We can’t prepare to survive without adequate rest. Our minds and bodies are craving what capitalism denies, and, as a result, we shut down.
Capitalism further pushes us away from the pursuit of rest at New Year; start exercising, eat better, start your day at 5am, get organised, learn a new skill… All pursuits that should be saved for a time outside of rest periods. To my mind at least, they aren’t tasks for mid-winter.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t set ourselves goals. As an ADHDer, I desperately need to work towards something. I need a way to structure the days and weeks ahead. Without structure, without a plan, I would spend all my time getting lost down the rabbit hole of social media.
Goals are part of the survival of seasonality. Each year the tree aims to expand its share of the canopy, the vixen to rear all her kits, the flower to be pollinated, the dormouse to fatten enough to survive long hibernation, the mushroom to fruit and spread its spores. Each season, every living thing has a goal to achieve to ensure its survival. Our human lives are both more complex and simplistic than pure survival; our goals should reflect this by mimicking nature and its seasons to provide sustaining joy.
With that, here are my seasonal and neurodivergent-friendly goals for 2023:
Read 3 books per month - 36 over the year.
Winter hit hard in December. The temperature in Sheffield dropped; we had a week where the ground was blanketed in snow, and seeing clouds of breath ceased to be surprising. My winter rest started. Usually, I hunker down with lots of tv, but when I am intentional about winter rest, my Story Graph (an alternative to Good Reads, which ICYMI is owned by Amazon) shows I read more in winter. My brain struggles to relax; it needs stories or information to consume, no matter the time of year. Reading allows my body to stop, but feeds my brain.
Usually, I set a yearly goal for the number of books I want to read, and for the past 5 years, I’ve not met it. Too often am I distracted by my phone or tv. This year, I’ve equally spread the number of books I want to read, creating a mini goal for every month to anchor my mind and keep my ADHD brain engaged. Inevitably, some months I’ll read more, like through winter, and others, I’ll read less, like in the height of spring when it feels like the world is finally in symbiosis, working hard to achieve the spoils of summer. Either way, reading is rest, and joy rolled into one, so I look forward to pursuing this goal.
Grow more food
This goal is particularly seasonal. In mid-winter, there's little to do in the garden. Any start I want to make has to wait until spring kicks in, and, once started, the majority of the hard work happens within one season, subsiding through the spoils of summer and coming to a standstill as winter approaches.
Gardening and growing have become integral to my mental health and making way for joy. The whole body tingle (often accompanied by a squeal and some light jumping or rocking) at seeing a bird at the feeder, bees at a flower, or a butterfly floating by, are unmatched. My busy ADHD brain is in constant motion… that is, until I garden. Gardening quietens my brain like NOTHING else I have ever pursued; it is peace and joy rolled into one.
Last year, I grew a few things in a raised bed in the back garden; strawberries, garlic, kale, and tomatoes. I wasn't as successful with the crops as I wanted, and my hope for this summer is a bed full and bountiful, but even with limited success, growing has kindled something in me. It feels like I've found something I've always needed, that was always missing.
I'm from a family of working-class growers. My family has never had a farm or masses of land, but my grandparents and great-grandparents lived in houses with some amount of garden. I've been told how my grandad grew up in a council house where the front garden was used exclusively to grow veg. As a grown man, he had an allotment and grew in half the garden at home too. My mom has recounted how her dad (my other grandad) grew veg in the garden when she was growing up, and my dad sets aside a patch to grow potatoes every year, with tomatoes in a small greenhouse.
What was once a necessity for working-class families, particularly through the war, is a mantel of kinship to the land, connecting me to past working-class generations. I furthered the bond with my working-class ancestors by getting my own allotment last year. My plot yielded raspberries, damsons, apples, and lots of wild, unruly blackberries without any work from me - all thanks to the previous growers and custodians who have kept the plants healthy and the land fertile. As we edge towards spring, my goal is to spend at least 1 day a week prepping the plot. If I can sow, grow and harvest 1 or two types of vegetables this year and get a compost heap set up, I'll consider it a win.
Travel more often
Although this is an aspiration set with the intention of making the most of summer, I've already started. As I write this, I'm in Vancouver, the city I lived in for over 4 years. I'm spending a month here, making the most of my ability to work remotely and making the plane ride ‘worth it’ - both environmentally and mentally.
When I was younger, my dreams were to travel the world. As I've gotten older and done some traveling, I realise how much I struggle with the push and pull between my wants and needs. The ADHD parts of me craves the dopamine hit of new places, new food, new cultures. The autistic parts of me find it overwhelming and can be triggered into shutdowns and meltdowns. Flying here, to Vancouver, as a newly self-diagnosed autistic person with ADHD, has made me more aware of how much I endure long-haul flights. The days of pre-flight anxiety that leave my stomach in knots of discomfort, the overwhelm at the airport that makes me feel childish and pathetic, the physical discomfort of being compacted into one position for 8+ hours, and the emotional and physical dysregulation of jet lag that makes me sick and needy, it all make so much sense in the context of diagnosis.
Being diagnosed, I understand why I struggle with some aspects of travel, and I don't want to tolerate those parts anymore. The benefit of diagnosis is that I know better how to care for my needs. I have to learn to navigate those needs in ways that sate both the ADHD urge to explore the new and the autistic urge to revel in the familiar, and I think the answer to this is accept I am not made for travel to far-flung places and travel more locally. I will enjoy travel more, without the accompanying overwhelm, so for 2023 (and beyond), I am focusing on short-haul flights, drivable destinations, and train rides. Top of my list is Spain (always), Portugal, Scotland, Stonehenge, a botanical garden in Wales, Cornwall (for the Eden Project), and York.
Continue writing The Joy Thief newsletter
Some goals are about ramping up, some are about ramping down. Others are about creating change. This goal is about maintaining, being static, being consistent. I started The Joy Thief newsletter on a whim and amazed myself by sticking to it. I don’t want to ruin the momentum, and I’m not ready for it to morph into something else just yet. Instead, I aim to simply keep doing what I’m doing.
As always, my intention is to write only when it brings me joy. There will be ebbs and flows, sometimes providing you with seasonal-based joy and intersectional insights every single Friday of a month. While other months, you might hear from me just once. Such is life and the seasons we go through.
If you’ve set any goals or intentions for 2023 that have a seasonal feel, do jot them down in the comments. I’m curious if we in this space of joy have intentionally or accidentally found goals that better guide us through the seasons.
Loved this and I too share some of your goals. I too have set myself a target to read more and grow more. With an allotment and small garden I’ve felt the joy and calm of getting my hands in the soil, as well as the excitement of seeing those tiny seeds grow into something edible.
I’ve been following the pagan wheel of the year for just over a year and have found this to help me when I’m in the depths of winter as the season and in my head.
Enjoy Vancouver and good luck for the growing season!