first day of SPRING

The transition from Winter to Spring in San Francisco is a series of stops and starts, summertime sunshine with a crack of cold wind that sneaks up your shirt in a sharp line from your waist.  Rain, rain rain and then a glorious day where everyone is wearing shorts and you are sweating and going, wait what?  Cherry blossoms?  Where are we?  What season is this?

The cherry trees in particular are confused.

It is the first day of Spring but I want to tell them all :  THE RAINS WILL COME AGAIN!   I wish I could tell them to just wait.  No need to hurry.  The real Spring is on its way.

You.  Can't.  Rush.  Magic.

It first came up in a conversation with a friend about the problem of being an artist and having a dayjob unrelated to your work.  Never feeling like you could really get movement forward, having some nights of intensive making, then weeks of fallow when you just don't have the energy to attack it after a day of intensity at the dayjob.  Trying to accept the pace your artwork can develop, letting the work you do evolve as you can, you can't rush it, you are spending half your life doing something else to survive so be gentle with your real work.  Be gentle with yourself as you keep both fires alive.  Just keep doing.

The lesson from the trees that keep on blooming with every suggestion of Spring is to persevere.  We may not be there yet, but in this little glorious window, I might as well try.  Find those bees that might flit from blossom to blossom.  What is there to lose, but to try?

You can't rush childhood, you can't rush the way your kids gonna do their thing, you can't rush how you grow as a parent, learn to parent.  You can't rush magic.

You also GOTTA MOVE in the in-between moments, find the niches where you can get it done, make some traction, learn those ABC's if you want to.

Spring is my favorite season because of this dance - the possibility!  Finding the gentle balance between the excitement of spring and the real, day to day work.  Then the rains come, you hunker down and the rhythm moves forward in the most wonderful way.