Some Thoughts on Spring

Spring is a strange time for me. Like most living things I go through upheaval in the spring. Some of it is good. Some of it is difficult. Some of it is internal. Some of it is external, some internal, some a special cocktail of mixing the two. Externally weather, work and that fucking daylight savings time are the three big influences. Weather and work are sly and a bit unpredictable. I find my enjoyment of spring as a season is directly related to how much rain there is. Too much sunshine really brings me down and these last couple of drought years have not been good to me. Work is the sly one because on one hand it is our slow season. We don’t see a lot of traffic in stores and that can play with your motivation. Numbers are down and frankly you miss the company of the customers. On the other hand the corporation goes through it’s own Spring upheaval. Committee’s, conference calls, pilot programs, new styles, new initiatives and all the time freaking out because business is slow. So I’m busy and I’m not. And Spring often sees changes in personal. That puts some stresses out there too. Bottom line is the job is a little psychotic in Spring. Summer is different. Summer brings in the business and then the focus becomes more direct.

I hated daylight savings time before they changed it two years ago. The new earlier daylight savings time is a freaking disaster for me. I have become a natural early riser. Usually I wake between five and six and I haven’t used an alarm clock in years. Fall is my most creative time. The journal that got abandoned during the dog days of summer gets updated daily usually starting in late October. (Around the time Daylight Savings Time ends.) I can usually keep that running with the gradual changing of early morning light until around the time Daylight Savings Time restarts when my internal clock is thrown completely off and I retreat from the world. It’s probably a rare thing but I’m sure I’m not alone in hating not just that first week of adjustment but the whole length of Daylight Savings. It’s the sunshine. It brings me down.

Fall is usually about creative production. I write more. I observe more. I would take more pictures but unfortunately my favorite creative outlet lives on light. There are fewer non-working hours with daylight. Spring is about mixing up the creative process. Spring is when I make my tech purchases. Camera and computer upgrades all happen in Spring for me. It is also when I run through my software choices. Everyday I seem to ask myself if this is the best way to process information in and out. The struggle lies in the way I learn. Going through the learning and testing process actually turns off a lot of my creative instincts. I’m reminded of the old “the medium is the message” line because I begin to work on the best ways to express myself right at the time that I have the least to say.

On the tech front this Spring I did very well. I adore my new Nikon D90. I upgraded my computer and more than doubled my monitor space. I have become a twitter junkie. I forced an upgrade on Karen and we are staying more connected and having a lot of fun doing it. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy making my desktop, laptop and phone all keep track of the same things with as little oversight as possible. Kudos to Nambu, Tweetie, Instapaper, Evernote, MacJournal, iBlogger, Blogger and of course Apple (including, yes, MobileMe which I did end up signing up for one more time) for making it all possible. And a special shout out again to Griffin for my Power-Mate which I still love to no end.

Bottom line is not that I need to come out from my cave. Bottom line is that I need to stop beating myself up for having gone in in the first place. This is what I do every spring. I move on. No matter where I am I’m going to write again. I’m going to take more pictures. I’m going to share. That’s my ultimate nature. Hopefully next year I’ll remember these things and you’ll be reading “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Spring” on this page.