In the bloom of spring, life doesn't stay stuck forever

Life breathes back in—and with it changes, decisions, and managing multiple streams of income.

Mar 27, 2024

I’ve long expressed my disdain for March. The month that can be a bitch and turn on you like that frenemy you keep at arm’s length because they can be so ruthlessly quick in its betrayal. I keep moving winter coats from closet to closet like a fool in my haste to say goodbye to the cold and all its layers of wool and down feathers, but March has its own ideas. It always does.

We may have turned a corner, however. And I’m not even referring to the weather which, in typical March fashion, has been a whiplash of sun and warmth one day and plunging temperatures the next. We are in the cold dip right now. The flowering buds hang on bravely, tightly wound to protect its coil of inner petals from all of March’s weather changes, but they always bloom in nature’s engineered dance to usher us into the season of spring.

I feel life breathing back in and there’s been an energy shift the last two weeks. Are you feeling it too? It might just be the extra light at the end of the day. When we first changed our clocks it had me cursing at the disorientation that daylight savings left behind even though it’s only an hour difference. Now, I gleefully declare at 7 p.m., “I love daylight savings!!!” as I see the glow of light still holding on. Just a few weeks ago, it would have been pitch dark after dinner.

The winter of waiting ends

This winter was the winter of waiting and a study in patience, and for that reason it felt long. I don’t do well in periods of the unknown. My pragmatic side craves concrete decisions and facts, so much so that I’ll sometimes preemptively make decisions to get ahead of uncertainty and too much speculation. I am the master of spinning unrealized and imagined scenarios in my head. I don’t know if this is stupid or wise. Maybe neither. When you aren’t in control—and much of life is beyond our control—it can be humbling for type A control freaks such as myself. Learning how to sit with all that discomfort still doesn’t make it comfortable.

In the moments where I have felt myself start to spiral from so much uncertainty, I take a cue from my cat. In his most contemplative state, I’ve watched him sit for hours in contentment just staring off into space in that loafy pose that cats do, where all their limbs disappear as they tuck themselves in. Never mind what goes on in that adorable pea-sized brain of his. His ability to zen out is the aspirational state of bliss that I strive for. And then, because cats are always on alert and masters of living in the moment, he spots something in the distance and zooms off to investigate.

I keep my obsession with cats to a minimum here, but it was only a matter of time before I drew my cat. The floodgates are open now. I hope you like drawings of cats.

This is how life has felt lately the past two weeks. Suddenly, the winter of idleness and waiting is over and life is racing forward again at full speed while I hang on for this wild rollercoaster ride. Because now we have some answers instead of the big question marks that have been hovering over us all winter.

I am now in the space I thrive in: making spreadsheets and lists, endlessly crunching numbers, and calculating, always calculating, to fit together the pieces of the moving puzzle that is family life. I orchestrate the chaos into some kind of workable plan that finally falls into place.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m referring to college decisions that have finally started rolling in for one kid and big summer abroad plans for the other. Although we are at the very edge of a completely empty nest, my life is still consumed with parenting decisions, but in a way things feels more weighty in its implications for the kids’ futures even though I know in the grand scheme of things this too is just a blip in their lives.

I remind my kids (and myself) that decisions don’t have to be forever. Still, in the flurry of deliberations that currently occupy our thoughts and discussions, it feels higher stakes than any parenting decision I’ve made in awhile. For now, I’m living vicariously through my children as they teeter on the precipice of big life changes and transformative experiences. A little piece of me is envious. I still remember what it feels like to have a tangle of knots in your stomach from a mix of excitement and anxiety. It’s hard to distinguish one sensation from the other because they’re so tightly intertwined. At its core lies an overwhelming sense of new possibilities.

Managing multiple streams as an independent creator

I found myself in an unplanned detour last week where I might have temporarily “unretired” myself by taking on a part time project for the next six or so months that will require flexing brain muscles that I haven’t flexed in a year. Suddenly, I was sitting with other people around a table in a client meeting, a real life meeting where you get to see the bottom half of people’s outfits. I found myself staring at everyone’s shoes, which is sort of odd, I know! I guess I’m still used to Zoom meetings as the norm. I was also relieved that I decided to wear boots instead of sneakers and a decent sweater because for most of it I sat there wondering, do I even know how to be professional anymore?

We’ll see.

As anxious as I am about all these changes, I remind myself that this is a choice too. And this, my friends, is something that I can control. I never thought of work in this post-corporate phase of my life as a binary on/off situation; it’s more like a spigot where I can control the flow of paid and personal projects as needed. I’ve never put all my eggs in one basket and this is even more critical now.

This is what you need to do to survive as an independent creator/freelancer/whatever this “thing” that I’m doing in semi-retirement is called. Remain open, remain flexible, but have clear boundaries so that you don’t slip back into that danger zone of not being the master of your own time—or worse, risk burnout all over again. Project-based work means there is an end and an out. This is key, and so is having multiple streams of income, of which this very newsletter is one. Occasional freelance work and investment dividends are the other. The ability to adjust the intensity of each stream so that they’re not all coming at you full throttle is the secret to staying sane.

The challenge for the rest of the year (and I can’t believe I’m already referencing the rest of the year) is being able to balance all the balls in the air again and carve out time for my “retirement hobbies” as I endearingly call them: my drawings, reading books, taking long walks, keeping up with exercise, visiting galleries every month, and coffee chat with friends.

But if I don’t post a drawing some weeks in this newsletter, you’ll know that I’ve failed to carve out time. It’s ok. I started to post them here to hold myself accountable, but I’m allowing myself grace because most things in life aren’t free and at the top of that list is college. 😳

We took a quick weekend trip down to D.C. this weekend in a sort of last minute decision to see yet another college campus. The ability to do things spontaneously again, however, was thrilling on its own. We’d never seen the famed cherry blossoms around the nation’s capital and luckily, our visit coincided with an early blossom schedule this year.

Well, it rained heavily that morning much to our bad luck. But then the day cleared and we were able to enjoy the spectacle of all the trees around the Tidal Basin after all, even if the day remained chilly. At least it kept the crowds away!

There really are a lot of cherry blossom trees here, maybe more than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life.

I hadn’t been down to D.C. in maybe fourteen or so years. I used to come down here all the time for various client projects for the Smithsonian and meetings when I was part of a media startup. Sometimes the family would come with me, and one of the kid’s most treasured stuffed animals from her childhood is a panda from the National Zoo.

Over the weekend, we visited some of the newer museums that have opened since those visits years ago: the National Museum of African American History and Culture (fantastic, by the way!) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. We also walked through the Hirshhorn Museum and Freer Gallery and logged ten miles just on that Saturday. We had dinner with cousins and brunch the next day with friends.

It was the first time we went anywhere in seven months and we needed it. Sometimes you have to quiet the voices in your head that whisper to you that you don’t need to spend the money on a hotel or tolls to save driving time or brunch or an entry fee to a museum….but friends, it’s worth every penny to get away sometimes.

Happy Spring! 🌸

In the bloom of spring, life doesn't stay stuck forever

Life breathes back in—and with it changes, decisions, and managing multiple streams of income.

The winter of waiting ends

Managing multiple streams as an independent creator

A few things I found interesting this week

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