#notes/seasons #topic/life-tracking

Living Seasons

I started timing my life through seasons during the pandemic, preferring a 3.5 month structure over 365 days. (I could also do terms since I work with a university, months, weeks, or year-to-year from birthday-to-birthday.) This page provides a brief overview of some of the practices I've adopted (and some abandoned) while trying to figure out what works for me.

The most wonderful thing I've learned from keeping these exercises is that seasons don't have much to do with the weather or color palette. Previously, my view of "seasons" was very limited to background knowledge and I wasn't often being intentional in my observation of the world. I now see and understand more about the cycles and patterns throughout the year, and instead of 4 separate seasons, time flows fluidly into the next micro-season from the last, and at all moments we are in a transition period.

Seasonal Engagement Projects (2024-present)

After focusing mostly on observation, I decided I needed to get more into actual engagement. It's one thing to recognize that each season has its own set of holidays, it's another one to force myself to learn about the holidays and in some cases celebrate new ones.

Bingo

Before each season starts I make a bingo page for that season. I started this in Fall 2024 and it's no surprise I got SEVERAL bingos that season (it tends to be my most active/social season anyway). For Winter 24-25, I only got one bingo, but it was wonderful to even get that much, since I tend not to do anything during winter (as my hibernation months). The bingo card not only has me doing more than I might have, but it is also a useful tool to help observe my patterns in energy levels throughout the years.

I am still going with Spring 2025 bingo!

Fall Bingo

To create a bingo card, I first draft up a 4x4 square (not 5x5, no free spaces intentionally!). Separately, I make a list of 16 seasonal things encompassing holidays, moods, creativity, education, or seasonal themes. This page is actually quite small (about 4x5 inches) so each of the boxes won't contain the full prompt, but rather a word or two and an image to represent it.

Winter Bingo

Once I complete each item, I color in the box. If I had just done ANYTHING for Chinese New Year this year, I could have had two bingos! And clearly, I didn't spend much time in the kitchen.

Spring Bingo

Summer Bingo
TBD

I drop the bingo card into a journal dedicated to that season.

• Each time I finish an item, I color in the bingo square and make an entry in the journal explaining what I did and my thoughts about it
• For fall when I made a bingo, I'd make a post on my Instagram what I did (including photos).
• By the time winter bingo came around, I had deleted my Instagram. The plan was to make a blog post with the same but I did not do that... partially because I forgot to take photos of each activity, not being so "social media minded." Perhaps I'll pick it up for spring.

I now have 4 journals for each season so even if I don't continue this bingo activity I'll have a space for my next round of seasonal reflection!

are.na

I keep an are.na channel for each season and have been doing this since 2022. I only add to the seasonal channels DURING that season, and it includes posts found on are.na that evoke (to me) that season's meaning or mood. Sometimes I add original thoughts/photos, but these mostly encompass what I found from others.

• Winter: https://www.are.na/max-bones/winter-hweunc_r61o
• Spring: https://www.are.na/max-bones/spring-bod1qgjv9ue
• Summer: https://www.are.na/max-bones/summer-7dg_pvd6qro
• Fall: https://www.are.na/max-bones/fall-no5hffccdd8

Obsidian setup

To help with my seasonal reflection and keeping track of everything, I have a base set up each season in Obsidian to support note taking and checklists.

In my personal/private area (that doesn't publish to the digital garden), there's a folder for seasons, and another folder underneath for each season (spring, winter, fall, summer). I've only been doing this for two seasons so far, so I'm not sure if the organization will stay there from year to year, but it works for now.

Under each season is a note for the following:

• Canvas
  • I embed my are.na channel so I always have a view of that seasonal media
  • Add photos or other observations about the season, most of which are too personal to post publicly
  • This also includes selfies so I can flip between seasons and see my changes over time
• "This week"
  • I use obsidian's "daily notes" feature for thoughts and feelings type of journaling, but I also keep a file that encompasses notes, bookmarks, or other random stuff I collect each week.
  • The file has all weeks for that season (12 weeks roughly) and provides a good location for me to review for when I write my monthly wrap ups or seasonal zines. I also keep bookmarks here instead of in browsers because I don't use the "sync browser" capabilities (I use different browsers on mobile vs desktop anyway).
• To do
  • Instead of daily, weekly, or monthly, I keep a seasonal to do list. This is not like the seasons tracker spreadsheet explained below. Instead, I divide my list into home, self, creativity, 101 things (goals list), and seasons.
  • The seasons bucket includes stuff like my seasonal zine, bingo, preparing for the next season, setup, etc. Everything else are normal everyday goals and the things I do to keep my life moving.
• Weeknotes
  • Similar to the "this week" file, but focused entirely on work stuff.
  • I used to keep this in Google drive, but in my journey to de-google, I moved it to Obsidian at the end of winter '25.
  • This is where I do all my complaining and reflecting privately. I am thinking of making a SFW version and adding it to the digital garden.

Seasonal Zine

One of my 101 Things in 1,001 Days goals is to create a zine each season for a year. I'm starting this for Winter 2024-25 which at the time of writing is not done yet, so I don't have much to reflect on yet, but I've started drafting and figuring out what I want these seasonal zines to be.

Seasonal Observation Projects (2022 - 2023)

In 2022 I started a seasonal project where I intentionally tracked my life and reactions to each season and shared my reflections with a handful of friends and family. It was a lot of fun sharing those observations. By watching the movement of seasons, I’ve gained some interesting insights. The project lasted from Winter to Fall and each season ended with a reflection letter and little art project of some kind. I enjoyed it but it was a lot of energy and required me to be in the mood to write, reflect, and be creative within a reasonable time after each season ended.

I’m sure that going forward I’ll still find ways to share the seasons with my people, but it will be more fun to do it DURING the season, not weeks into the next one!

The project had a bunch of different branches, some of which died early year, others continued and will be evolving into something else during the next set of seasons.

Seasons Tracker spreadsheet

I purchased this habit tracker spreadsheet from youareloved and modified it from a yearly tracker to a seasonal one. Other than the timeline modification and some category updates, I mostly stuck to the rest of the format offered in the original file.

• I grouped yearly goals into a few categories: Reflection & Development, Home & Finances, Learning, Creativity, Social Balance
  • Yearly goals changed throughout the year, so my spreadsheet isn’t entirely dynamic. In retrospect I should have had yearly categories & seasonal goals, rather than expecting myself to benefit from the same goals all year.
  • Some of the goals I found fruitful to track and will continue monitoring in the new year, but keeping 2-3 goals per category was overwhelming: there were too many categories/goals to keep track of. In the future, I’ll limit myself to 5-7 goals total across the categories.
• Each season had a page with areas for:
  • Weekly habits (7-10 habits tracked per week) – in the original template, these are daily, so I did some modification here to account for weeks per season. My weekly habit items were life maintenance tasks that I have difficulty getting to when I’m medium-low energy.
  • Accomplishments (per month, a list of achievements and stuff that made me smile) – in the original template, these are weekly habits. Freewriting area to list stuff.
  • A short checklist to accomplish by the end of the season – in the original template, these were monthly habits. This was put here to remind me to do my budget, reflect for my letters, etc.
  • Yearly goals (per month, check which goals I completed) – this was included in the original template – I updated the category names though
• Helpful links out to other seasonal review items: Budget tracker which began in August, seasonal review doc where I was keeping notes for my mail project, home maintenance review, etc.

For the 2023 seasons, I moved my tracking system from only-Google to Notion & a seasonal art journal. My Notion setup has several areas for budgeting, season review, tracking goals/habits, etc., and the seasonal art journal is flexible in what it could contain – bullet-journal like pages tracking spend/no-spend days, reminders/aids, mixed media expression of the season, etc.

Though I’m formatting and using different tools than I was in 2022, a lot of the foundational logic comes from the spreadsheet system. It will be interesting to watch how my tracking evolves over the next year or two now that more flexible self-documentation tools are available.

Season craft

My thought behind a seasonal craft was that I’d send it with my letters at the end of every season.

I started a seasonal art journal so I can continue with trying to express the seasons on the page in different ways. Last year it was mostly doodles but I was always frustrated I didn’t have one central location to go and journal about that – I bought a new journal as soon as I had that thought.

My “season craft” turned into more of a general “seasonal creative reflection.” I hope that in 2023 I’ll keep sharing my observations of the seasons with people, though, because I got such good feedback from all my friends who said it made them think more about the seasons too!

Season letter

I loved the idea of doing a seasonal reflective letter and sending it to a few people in my life. It was a way to get me out of the house (so I can really immerse myself in the world during that season), pay attention to my surroundings, proactively engage in the environment, and find time to reflect on observations in a concrete, meaningful way that could be shared with other people. I have to admit, I didn’t have high hopes for myself finishing since year-long projects aren’t usually my thing, but I’m proud to say I’ve now sent 3/4 letters (and at the time of writing this, the fourth is almost done and ready to go).

Season cryptid

I had such high hopes for this one, but in the end it wasn’t sustainable with everything else I had going on. The idea was to “adopt” a cryptid every season, go to an East Coast (easy to drive to) cryptozoology museum featuring artifacts from that cryptid, make a craft and otherwise immerse myself in that creature all season. I did really well with winter & spring but once summer came, I was too exhausted to give attention to such things.

• Winter – Mothman, went to the Mothman Museum in Point Pleasant, WV., made mothman papercrafts, watched lots of mothman media
• Spring – Sasquatch, went to a Cryptozoology Museum in Littleton, NC., got Benny the big Squishmallow sasquatch, watched lots of sasquatch media
• Summer – Flatwoods Monster, planned a trip but didn’t go, planned art but ran out of energy
• Fall – ??

I really enjoyed this idea, though. Who knows when I will randomly need to love on a cryptid all season? Now I have a nice little fallback for that.

Season reflection

In my season reflection, I list all the stuff I did or meaningful things that happened, as much as I can recall on the day I’m catching up (I try to catch up 2-3 times a season). This is also where I reflect on my thoughts about nature-seasonal things, like how the weather’s been, what the world looks like/color palettes, whatever other seasonal observations I’ve made.

I’ll continue to do this kind of reflection within Notion.

I don’t know if this is the best way to document a project – I probably should have taken pictures as I went so I’d have pictures to share now – but oh well! It’s what I’ve got for you today.

Created: 12/30/22