Tending the Lantern in Late Winter
Some winters feel crisp and purposeful. Snow falls. Skis glide. There’s structure to the season. This has not been that kind of winter. This winter has felt like marking time. Long afternoons. Not enough days with friends. News that feels heavy and constant. A spark of romance that flared and went out. Professional rejections. Personal ones too.
The snow hasn’t been falling much here. It’s just been cold and brown and stretched thin. I’ve been working as much as I can. Trying to figure out how to market myself in a world reshaped by AI and political and economic instability. Trying to understand how to sell dog portraits when people are worried about rent and democracy.
It’s a strange thing to make art in times like this. But I keep making it. Not because I feel especially inspired. Not because it’s easy. But because tending small lights is what I know how to do. I notice the hot coffee in the morning. Clean sheets. A good thrift store find. Puppy snuggles. The particular blue of the sky at 4:45 p.m.
I send care packages. I tuck free stickers into envelopes. I make collages when my eyes are tired from the screen. I journal when the words rattle too loudly inside me.
I watch Murder, She Wrote. I make playlists to flirt with men I’m interested in. I go to yoga and practice breathing. I apply for jobs outside of Camplight. I get rejected. I apply again. None of this is glamorous. None of it looks like a big creative breakthrough. But it is a kind of faithfulness.
Mid-February usually feels like the dead center of winter. This year, it feels like the edge. Not because everything is better (it isn’t) but because I am done waiting passively. If spring is going to be better, I have to help make it better. That doesn’t mean forcing growth. It means preparing for it.
Cleaning the studio. Sharpening pencils. Sending the email. Submitting the application. Asking for a date. Going outside even when it’s brown. Continuing to make things with my hands.
In wilderness education, we talk about shoulder seasons. The in-between times. Snow melting but trails not yet dry. Rivers rising but not runnable. Nothing is fully available. Everything feels transitional.
That’s where I am.
Maybe you are too.
If this winter has felt long, if you’ve been marking time instead of racing forward, I want to say this clearly: You are not behind. You are tending. And tending matters. Spring will come because it always does. But I don’t want to arrive there empty-handed. I want to arrive having done the quiet work of keeping something warm.
