Trust Your Creative Seasons

on operating in greater-than-human time 💫

Roadside mint to garnish a freshly-squeezed orange juice in the Turkish countryside. Sharp, spring onion nestled in the dirt on a path to a beachside bathroom. Branches full of fragrant Pacific pine to smoke whole chicken with. Tangy, bright pink flesh of a cactus fruit found by a dilapidated church. Sweet woodruff from the Colorado mountains for a creme anglaise that garnishes a single slice of pear. These are some of the many things my wife—a chef with a passion for micro-seasonality & hyper local ingredients—has found in the wild, and transformed into her art.

Jocelyn & I are good together, each revering the Earth in complimentary ways. She’ll collect pinecones, wood, and bouquets of found flowers while I write poems out loud, or bask in a shimmering tree on our walks outside. We’ll both stop in a patch of sunlight and exclaim, “CHARGING!” with wide, childish grins. I have learned so much by watching her about the generosity of the land, and the treasure that is underneath our noses.

Witnessing her honor a foraged ingredient—its habitat, flavor, and fruiting in its rightful window of time—has reminded me to honor my own seasonality, and the ephemeral treasures, textures, and experiences that occur within them. As humans, we are humble extensions of nature, and thus also have our seasons for resting & hibernating; absorbing nutrients & being nourished; fruiting & blooming; and withering & decaying.

Recently, I’ve experienced my seasons more vividly than ever, having published my debut poetry collection, Gospel of a Whole Sun, in May of last year. Preparing for launch—including editing & finalizing my manuscript, and all the pre-marketing work that goes into telling everyone I know (!) that I am birthing a book—was a gargantuan effort in itself. Then, without pause, I entered into a doozy of a spring with a dozen book launch events across the country. It was a season of being seen, celebrating, and connecting with my incredible community.

On my book tour, audience-members often asked, “Do you have plans for a second book?” Sparkly-eyed and full of adrenaline, I’d answer, “YES! I have sooooo many ideas.” I wanted to write a smutty lesbian romance about a female samurai and her forbidden lover in ancient China. A children’s book about a slug that is really a nod to resisting capitalism. An auto-fiction novel based on the many dramatic events in my life.

But, when I sat down to the page after book tour, not a single word wanted to come out.

the magnificence of being seen

In the following months, I’d write a few scraggly poems here & there, but nothing I was particularly proud of. Instead, I spent that summer with loved ones, attending family weddings and adopting a 10-year old cat from the shelter. I hunkered down with work in the fall, with speaking engagements & creative coaching clients. Come winter, I was in full hibernation mode, relishing in the quiet snow.

It wasn’t until the beginning of this year, when I traveled to Taiwan & the Philippines (my ancestral homelands!) and recently to Mendocino for an artist’s residency, that I felt the true touch of inspiration flow through me again. At first, a trickle—and now, a monsoon—is streaming out of me. I’ve been writing poems in workout classes, outlining essays in meditation, and piecing together projects as I move through my day. Creating during this season—almost a full year after my last project debuted—is unstoppable, and abundant with ease.

Looking back, I’m grateful that I didn’t force myself to begin a new writing project sooner, or feel the capitalist pressure to start working on “the next thing.” My seasons of rest & living were necessary components in my creative cycle to allow for my current season of creation to flourish.

Jocelyn often references Japan’s 72 micro-seasons, a traditional Eastern calendar that marks the passage of the seasons with changes in the natural world. The calendar is divided into 24 major divisions, or sekki, and again divided by 3 to create 72 kō that last around 5 days each. As I write this, we are in the sekki 啓蟄 Keichitsu (Insects awaken), in the kō “First peach blossoms.” The entire calendar is as specific and poetic as this, with kō such as “Dew glistens white on grass,” “Tachibana citrus tree leaves start to turn yellow,” and “Hawks learn to fly.”

What if we learned our own rhythms this intimately? Let go of the linear confines of capitalist time and lived into deep, cosmic, Earth time? How can we trust that we will fruit & flower when we are meant to; and that resting & caring for ourselves is just as lush with vitality?

Hibernating, playing, and living life to gather the inspiration needed to create are all crucial components of the creative process. And, it is precisely because of the impermanence and anticipation that make each fleeting season that much more satisfying, like the first bite of a sweet strawberry after a long, dark winter.

What can you harvest from this season of your life? Taste it with all of your senses, relishing in the fact that this too, won’t last forever.

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Thank you for being here, just as you are. If you have the means to upgrade your subscription, please consider doing so! As a full-time artist, paid subscriptions directly fund my livelihood—and mean the world to me.

You can also support my work by checking out my poetry book, Gospel of a Whole Sun, or working with me 1:1 for creative coaching. Wishing you blessings & ease, until we meet again!