A season to rest and recharge

It’s summertime.

Time to stop picking the asparagus and broad beans at our allotment, and enjoy the lettuce and runner beans, the courgettes, tomatoes and spinach. All the hard work earlier in the year – the digging, the feeding, the planting, the weeding – starts to bear fruit. Or more accurately in my case, vegetables. 

There was a time when I would try to fight the seasons, growing produce on windowsills, or in the greenhouse in winter. Nothing really thrived. Including me.

It was miserable being out in the garden on grey mid-winter afternoons, tending winter lettuces that tasted bitter and limp even when they did survive long enough to harvest. 

Now I tend to see those dark, cold months as a time for planning, reading, exploring what I might want to grow next year. I forget about the allotment altogether, simply dressing it with a thick winter coat of leaves and bark, seaweed and shredded cardboard, and leaving that to rot down and create rich new soil. 

Creativity too has its cycles and seasons. 

One of my favourite books last year was Katherine May’s beautiful meditation Wintering. It’s about her burnout and recovery, but also about those fallow periods that occur in every creative life. As she so brilliantly shows, we need to be gentle with ourselves at such times, to rest and replenish, and find what feeds our weary souls.

I’ve learned to work with my cycles, and I now have routines for my creative winters. I go for meandering walks and seek out long chats with fun and interesting friends. I tidy up, to clear space for something new. I go to exhibitions, read, watch films and talks. And I try not to push or get anxious if I’m not productive, allowing myself lots of time for reading, day-dreaming and noodling about with no real goal in mind. 

Eventually, my curiosity springs back.

Ideas start to bud and unfurl, and I can’t help but explore them. The reading gets more purposeful, and turns into research. I’m sowing seeds now, weeding out unwanted material, feeling more productive and creative. At some point, a new project will emerge, and I’ll decide to focus on it, to bring it to completion. 

Then comes summer, that glorious period of fruitfulness when you find it hard to stop working. It’s challenging, this part, but also rewarding. You’re often in flow, time seems to fly as you’re absorbed in the task to hand, and your new project slowly takes shape. 

There are still wintery spells.

Of course there are dull days, and darker weeks when the work gets more difficult. When it all seems like a terrible idea and there’s no end in sight. But persist and autumn will eventually arrive: the time for editing and polishing, finishing your project and making the most of the harvest.

With allotment produce, that means freezing and cooking, bottling and preserving, making jams and pickles to see you through the winter. With a creative project, it means putting it out there, selling and promoting it, making sure you’re rewarded for the work you’ve done. Then we’re able to rest through the fallow period without guilt or fear.

You learn to trust your creative rhythms.

The more you make, the more you learn to go with your cycles and seasons, instead of fighting them. And the easier it gets to bear the barren, unproductive times. Even in the darkest, coldest days, you know that spring will come, if you rest and trust the process. It always does. 

This year, my creative winter coincides with the British summer. I’ve spent the past two months closing open loops, bringing a couple of big projects to a close. So in July and August, I’m going to take a deliberate break, to enjoy the garden, the beach, the sunshine. To rest, reflect, and prepare the ground for seeding something new. 

For me, it’s time to slow down for a while.

So I’m only going to post here twice a month over the next few weeks, instead of every Monday. In September, I’ll be launching some new things I’ve made, and my next group programmes. Hopefully I’ll also have some new ideas to share.

In the meantime, have a great summer. Try to take a break, too, and enjoy the sunshine. We all need time to recharge!