Waiting For Spring.

Today, I am desperate for spring.

I bought this candle yesterday, the first scented one I've bought in a while…and I bought it because it reminded me of the smell of grass after a spring rain. Of budding trees and the way wet dirt can smell so lovely, after long, hard months nothing but of snowy winds and white mountains and icy tracks. I want it in the worst way today, spring. I want muddy trails and budding trees and melting lakes…cool air and long walks and rainy clouds. Too early mornings out on the deck, bundled up in blankets and sitting outside with my coffee because I finally can. Of throwing on a down vest or a cardigan before walking out instead of spending ten minutes prepping for the cold with scarves, mittens, hats, heavy coat, and boots. Of opening my window to let the air in instead of battening down the hatches.

In a sentence, I am fucking done with winter.

I find myself getting increasingly maddened by the small things. Crabby with them. I get annoyed when my tea gets cold after only three sips. Irritated when my neck feels tight. Frustrated when the sentences won't lie down the way I want them to. Tired of being tired all the time. I haven't written anything substantial in weeks because I just don't want to, because it seems like so much work to go deep when it's so much easier to hunker down with a Netflix marathon. I resent my To-Do list: I don't want to be productive, I don't want to answer your emails, I just want to crawl into the hole that is my white downy bed and not come out until the snow is all gone and things are colorful again.

Which is, obviously, not an option. That is the hardest part of waiting for spring: No matter how much hope gathers in my chest and rises up through my throat and bursts out of my mouth, it will not make it come any sooner.

I can only manifest it on the inside.

So, the candle. And the daily effort to draw out some brightness, to keep things warm. I'm striving to take a page from my h.s. friend Sara's blog and add more color to my life. Verdant greens and bright purples and stunning blues. Maybe even a plush pink somewhere in there. Lemon Ginger tea is also the best thing…pungent and sunny and tart, like you're growing a citrus garden on the inside. Yoga and meditation…always, even when I don't want to, even when they feel like they're just one more thing to do in a too-short day. And the writing…I've had this curious, guilt-ridden block to writing lately (actually, all winter, if I'm honest). I just don't want to do it. Lately I'd rather write blog posts or journal entries than get to work on another book…it feels like this huge, mountainous project that I just don't have the energy for. I find myself thinking of the work it takes, instead of the all-encompassing, life-affirming joy it gives. Yet then, earlier today, I saw this on Pinterest and it was like a river gushed forth. I want to be swung up in the fervor of a new book, of every day creating something, of getting closer to having that thing in my hands, by the time spring comes. I want it to be the way I open my days and close my nights. And I realized that the want is there, but it's as if the dark and the snow and cold has tramped it down. Like a writing hypothermia. It makes me want to lie down and go to sleep instead of searching for warmth.

But I want that bursting, you know? I'm tired of hiding out. I'm tired of hibernating. I want things to be born instead of having them die off. Even if I have to birth them myself.

I'm also moving somewhere eternally sunny in the next couple years. Because this four seasons crap can fucking suck it.