Seasonal Observation

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.

I highly recommend downloading a spreadsheet someone else already made and then updating it to your needs, if you don’t have the time or energy to create something from scratch. Having this spreadsheet system in 2022 really helped me get my life back on track after suffering severe burnout and depression for a few years. The system relies on myself reviewing the checklist at least once a week and actually doing something on it (or checking it off if I already have). Looking back at 2022, I did at least one thing every week, even during my lowest energy time periods.

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