January Newsletter

NO. 42 | January 2025

Happy New Years, friends!

January has become one of my very favorite months. I think it was easy to write it off as cold and dark for a lot of my life. But, I think it’s a singular time of the year, and one that I’ve come to appreciate quite a lot. I hope to tell you about what I’m planning for 2025 later this month (really how I’m planning for 2025), but today I want to talk about living seasonally, and how it has improved my relationship to the year as a whole (and to all kinds of weather).

This isn’t a new idea: wintering is a common way of describing how to embrace the need for rest and staying home during the cold months. But, it wasn’t really something that came to me ideologically. Instead, over the past year, I’ve found that following a path more aligned with the seasons has unfurled quite naturally. I think it started with plants and food and spending more time outside, and then I began to explore those feelings and how they related to my choices. I think another way to say living seasonally is to say living personally in tune with the Earth.

Let’s back up. When I lived in Chicago, I didn’t like winter much. I don’t think anyone there likes winter very much. During the freezing months, my lifestyle didn’t change that much, but it got harder to do the things I kept making myself do. I spent the coldest days bundling up and trundling around to see friends or do this or do that. But, half the time, it felt sort of miserable. Yes, it could be good to get out of the apartment. But there was also something forced about it—my brain and my body wanted to respond to the cold and the dark with sleep and warmth. Instead, I responded with busy schedules and breakneck-pace goals.

Now that I live somewhere quite rural, I pay a lot of attention to the natural world. Emilio and I go on walks and remark to each other: When did the violets start blooming? Look! A Phoebe! The goldenrod is finally fading. In some ways, we track time with the living things around us. And in noticing these relationships outside of ourselves, I’ve noticed a lot of changes in my own lifestyle.

Let’s go back to January, where we are now. Outside, nothing blooms (at least in the Northeast where I live). The birds that stick around through the winter grow big, downy coats and spend more time resting than singing or flying. Snow piles outside of the doors, barricading us inside. The gardens and farms are closed down. The days are more dark than light. Everything around us is slow and quiet and regenerating. It feels right for me to be those things, too.

January doesn’t mean I’ll be doing nothing or that I’ll never be going outside. I love snowy walks and winter air. I’m really not one who does nothing in any circumstance. But, I am doing things restoratively. If my mornings are slow because the sun isn’t up, then I get a little less done. Maybe I go to bed early so I can sleep longer. Dinner might be bread and soup for days on end. It’s January.

And speaking of soup, I’ve found this natural cadence has really impacted how I want to eat. We spent a lot of 2024 getting food from local farms. It now feels sort of unnatural to buy grocery store strawberries in the middle of winter, not to mention that they just can’t hold a candle to the flavor of in-season berries. This is true of a lot of foods that grocery stores make available to us at anytime. I’m not saying I don’t still purchase out-of-season produce sometimes (especially for baking). But, my body isn’t really asking for those foods. I’ve been wanting to eat squash and porridge and soup and bread—not summer tomatoes or spring greens. (Though, of course, when the seasons start to change, I will joyfully munch into what that brings.)

This change in rhythm over the course of a year has also sort of solved a problem of time for me. Everything has its season. This month, I’ll be writing, illustrating, knitting, reading about baking bread or identifying tree buds, and sewing for myself. But in the spring, maybe I’ll work on a new pattern, or start generating some new story ideas while I dig into garden soil. In the bustle of summer, I’ll get caught up enjoying and preserving the plants while I buzz around and try to fit in too many things (summer and winter are opposites in so many ways). In the fall, I’ll welcome the shift back through the cycle again.

Just like animals or plants, we change as the year passes. I won’t be happy living like it’s August if it’s really March—I might not even be capable of the same things in those months. Following my intuition here feels really right. I believe the key to finding success or happiness in anything is balance. Seasonal balance has come to be quite foundational to that! So try it—set your goals and your resolutions, but let your body and your mind pursue them alongside rest and sleep and soup.

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On a logistical note, I’m no longer going to be announcing Swim Along with Me posts in advance. I’m still going to be writing that series, but each month will offer unscheduled and rotating kinds of posts that include SAWM, Nature Logs, and more. You’ll still hear from me 2-3 total times each month (and always at least once).

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I’ve finally finished all 42 blocks for my Nova Star quilt. I’ve been sewing them since early 2024, and sometime soon I’m going to assemble them and prepare them to be quilted! Crazy that this will adorn our bed in 2025. I’m also learning to colorwork knit (mostly while Otto sleeps on my lap), and I’d love to share more about how I learned this hard and not-so-hard skill once I’ve finished my first project!

Emma Carlisle is one of my favorite illustrators! She’s not very active on social media, but she runs a really amazing Patreon where she shares tons of her work and provides lots of activities for you to work alongside her. Beyond admiring her work itself, I really admire her work ethic and commitment to developing a practice, pushing herself, and showing up at the table. She has a few lovely picture books, and I’m excited to get the latest one!

✷ Did you know you can sew mittens? I might just have to after I finish knitting the colorwork pair
✷ I’ve been deep into interior design posts recently, and I love this bathroom
✷ This is the bread-baking book I use
✷ Speaking of cookbooks, I was gifted this beautiful one
✷ Really cool Doechii performance