Spring—my annual savior—has finally arrived, and I’m once again looking back on the grueling grind of winter and saying to myself, “I’ve got to find ways to cope better next year.”
I’m still working on building more supports into my life in various ways, but I have found one thing that seems to strongly help me, that I hope to lean hard into next winter: deliberately feeding my mind.
This is not an easy thing for those whose lives (like mine) are largely consumed by survival-level needs: work, childcare, and upkeep of body and home. Add in the programming of “my needs don’t matter” (thanks, Christian patriarchy), and it’s hard to even remember that feeding my mind is important.
But I keep trying, and I’m glad to report that my current system is working pretty well for me. It’s quite simple: I have four daily goals for feeding my mind. Meeting them requires intentionality and even stretching myself a bit; I don’t often get all four done in a day. But when I do get to, my soul feels wonderfully filled up and enlivened!
I wrote about this dynamic in a “Serenity Splash” poem a few months ago. This poem keeps revealing itself as deeply true, as well as reminding me when I forget:
The cares of life and loved ones
will squeeze me flat if I
do not push back and fill me up
with what ignites my mind.
Here are my four daily mind-food goals currently:
“Project Writing Practice” (PWP): working on my current main writing project, which right now is revising my middle-grade novel
Write & post a “Serenity Splash” poem or other poem — this works especially well as mind-food when it’s something I can tinker with in my mind as I move through various parts of my day, such as driving
Write & post another blog post (in my other sections and/or anonymous blogs)
Do one study lesson — currently I’m rotating between studying physics, Latin, and rationality (via Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “sequences” essays on Lesswrong.com)
I usually have other books and audiobooks going as well, but those are just for whenever I can; same with my other writing practices, such as journaling and songwriting.
The more I practice having these four daily mind-food goals, the more correlation I see with my sense of wellbeing. More mind-food goals met = happier mood and less anxiety.
I’ve heard that this is particularly a thing for people with “high intelligence”: inadequate intellectual stimulation leads to destructive anxiety. It makes sense, and I’ve certainly seen that dynamic play out with our dogs (mostly, of course, the Border Collie)!
So yes, next winter I plan to buckle myself in to floor it toward those daily goals (in whatever form they might be at that point), to shore myself up against the winter blues until lovely spring again returns.
Sunday Springs
Section posts from the past week
🏝️Book Beach
🖋️Writer’s Waters
🪷Serenity Splashes
reflections following an encounter with extreme prejudice
It hurts when I hear someone call a group of people "trash" (especially when it's about skin color or some such). What stones are thrown from base and baseless hate, primitive tribalism, and crude indoctrination! When your mind is free, it costs nothing to see people beyond your group as people.
A note to my younger self--and anyone else who needs to hear it
To question all that you believe can feel like facing death, but I promise, on the other side, there's life-- and freer breath.