Seasonal Living: Why You Weren’t Meant to “Bloom” All Year

We have optimized the world to be seasonally agnostic. We have strawberries in January, light at 2:00 AM, and “Quarterly Growth” targets that must always point up. We treat ourselves like machines that should be at peak performance 365 days a year.

But as any editor knows, a story that is all climax is exhausting. For a narrative to work, it needs “The Lull.”

1. The Myth of Constant Productivity
In the gardening world, they understand “The Fallow Year”—a year where you plant nothing so the soil can regain its nutrients. In our careers, we view a fallow period as a “gap in the resume” or a sign of failure.

We’ve forgotten that winter is not a death; it’s a preparation. If you try to force a bloom in the middle of your personal winter, you don’t get a better flower; you just get a dead plant. You need periods of “input” where you aren’t expected to produce a single “output.”

2. The Edit of the Environment
In the old days, the changing seasons forced an “Edit” of our lives. We changed our clothes, our food, and our social habits. This provided a natural “Refresh” for the brain.

Today, we sit in climate-controlled offices under LED lights, doing the same tasks in October that we did in April. This creates a “Blur” where years disappear because nothing differentiates them. To reclaim your time, you must enforce your own seasons. * Have a “Season of Reading” where you decline social invites.

Have a “Season of Expansion” where you say yes to everything.

Have a “Season of Maintenance” where you fix what’s broken and do nothing new.

3. Respecting the “Cycle of the Story”
Every great piece of journalism follows a cycle: The Curiosity, The Research, The Struggle, and finally, The Publication. Most people want to live forever in “The Publication”—the moment of success and recognition.

But the most interesting part of a person is usually the “Struggle” or the “Curiosity.” By trying to be “always on,” you are cutting out the best chapters of your own story. You are making yourself a headline without an article.