Embracing Winter: A Time for Peace, Planning, and Introspection | Day 16 of my 2023 Journal

Peace and Planning.

We are not doing much these days. We get up. We go for runs and yoga moments, and we have coffee and breakfast, we talk, we clear, we cook, we knit, we read, we eat, we watch Dr. Who in the evenings, and we sleep. It is winter. It is silent time.

Yet - a lot is going on. We do not do much regarding long walks, cathedrals, and art museums, and we hardly make new friends. We do things slowly and let this filter of the winter vibe let what is important stand, and everything else fades.

It feels good. After five weeks in Vila Nina in Sicily, we are finally reaching the stage of:

Peace and Planning.

In our case, it is almost counter-personality to make plans.

We are very spontaneous people who like to go with our intuitions, follow our hearts, just do things and look it up on the way, and find solutions and new ways and new horizons all the time.

This long winter pause took us to a place where we could actually do some planning. It takes time. Doing the budget, looking at options, selling what needs to be sold, planning what needs to be planned, preparing for big adventures, and leaving space in the calendar for all the peace and spontaneity we also need.

We do a bit of it every day—just a bit. Organize the agenda, the plans, the paperwork, the bucket lists, the gear, the bags, the van, the Google Maps, the Wikipedia reading list, browsing through festivals to aim for in the summer and slow mountain tops to walk to between cathedrals, metropoles, and villages.

It is fun and boring and seems endless.

But it does clear the mind, leaving us fresh and strong and ready.

Ready to change the plan, get new ideas, and listen to the heart. Always write the plan with a pencil. But make sure you do actually write it.

Love and light

Cecilie Conrad

PS Photo from December when we visited the cathedral of Syracuse, as I did not take any photos yesterday. Amazingly, the old Greek temple still stands inside the Catholic Church.