Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall

Mini Musings

Speaking of 95°F, it’s officially summer. The way I think about the coming and going of seasons is analogous to the way I think about New Years; a new season is a chance to reflect, take stock of your life, and think about where you want the next season to go.

I talked with a friend a few months ago about the seasons of life and how that comes to fruition in work and motivation. She spent a month in Utah having arguably the best month of her life: skiing every day, meeting new people, and timing all of the powder. We joked about her full time job and what she felt like was a subsequent drop in productivity, but how she was viewing it as a season rather than reflective of her work ethic in totality.

She got her work done and did what was needed, and then lived her life after that was done. I loved the interweaving of seasonality as it relates to that because I think so often we view our current states as permanent, especially if we feel that we’re falling short of where we should be. If I have a lazy day, I’m such a piece of shit because that’s obviously how I’ll be forever.

Sometimes I’ll have days, week, or even months where I feel like I’m on top of the world at work and absolutely crushing it. Whenever I’m in that high, I feel this pressure to concretize it and freeze myself in that way — if I just eat my vegetables, get enough sleep, and journal every morning, that can be my permanent state.

Spoiler alert: nothing is permanent.

It may just be another way to release control, or somehow disassociate, but I’ve found it so helpful to view everything through the lens of seasonality. Take, for example, the whole reason I started this newsletter. I felt like somewhere along the way I stopped actively participating in the curation of my life. I spent months on autopilot, without having a really good day where life slows down and you just feel alive.

And guess what? That was just a season.

This could be your season of growth. Of change. Rebirth. Or stillness. It can be whatever you want it to be! Just promise me that if you don’t like the season you’re in, you won’t beat yourself up and go thinking it’ll exist forever.

Artiste In The Making

You know those quotes that just randomly stick with you for years to come? One of mine is something the CEO of the first company I ever worked at said in an all hands meeting.

“Passion isn’t something you arrive at. Passion is something you cultivate over time.” - a white man who was ultimately asked to step down as CEO because the company culture was so toxic. Never meet your heroes.

There’s such a dance to figuring out what you want to work on as an artist. For me, it started with Graphic Design. I fully thought that’s what I wanted to do full time and threw myself into it as a side hustle for a few years. The struggle is you can’t tell what most kinds of work are like unless you do them — so for me, it took 4 years of Graphic Design for ~20 hours to week to realize I wasn’t actually that crazy about it. I wouldn’t call a second of those 4 years wasted, though, because it led me to drawing.

To me, that’s what art should look like. Cycling through different mediums and styles for as long as it takes so long as you to keep enjoying what you’re doing.

I have no idea where this will be in a year: this newsletter, my art, my business, even my life! I just hope I’m still growing and enjoying doing it every day as much as I do right now.

Here’s me speaking it into existence: this is my season of growth.