Back

Embracing Winter: A Time for Peace, Planning, and Introspection | Day 16 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Jan 16, 2023· 2 minutes

Peace and Planning.

We are not doing much these days. We get up. We go for runs and yoga moments, and we have coffee and breakfast, we talk, we clear, we cook, we knit, we read, we eat, we watch Dr. Who in the evenings, and we sleep. It is winter. It is silent time.

Yet - a lot is going on. We do not do much regarding long walks, cathedrals, and art museums, and we hardly make new friends. We do things slowly and let this filter of the winter vibe let what is important stand, and everything else fades.

It feels good. After five weeks in Vila Nina in Sicily, we are finally reaching the stage of:

Peace and Planning.

In our case, it is almost counter-personality to make plans.

We are very spontaneous people who like to go with our intuitions, follow our hearts, just do things and look it up on the way, and find solutions and new ways and new horizons all the time.

This long winter pause took us to a place where we could actually do some planning. It takes time. Doing the budget, looking at options, selling what needs to be sold, planning what needs to be planned, preparing for big adventures, and leaving space in the calendar for all the peace and spontaneity we also need.

We do a bit of it every day—just a bit. Organize the agenda, the plans, the paperwork, the bucket lists, the gear, the bags, the van, the Google Maps, the Wikipedia reading list, browsing through festivals to aim for in the summer and slow mountain tops to walk to between cathedrals, metropoles, and villages.

It is fun and boring and seems endless.

But it does clear the mind, leaving us fresh and strong and ready.

Ready to change the plan, get new ideas, and listen to the heart. Always write the plan with a pencil. But make sure you do actually write it.

Love and light

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

PS Photo from December when we visited the cathedral of Syracuse, as I did not take any photos yesterday. Amazingly, the old Greek temple still stands inside the Catholic Church.

Visiting Great Britain, we thought: let's go visit a tearoom. Asking around, the best tearoom in the area was supposedly the PuddleDuck Tearoom. Eati…Read more
I will let the pictures speak for themselves. There is not much more to say. Walking for several hours with my family and my friends in this beauty w…Read more
We all had the feeling we were walking in the Shire. Beauty unfolds all the time, new angles, new hills, new beautiful horizons and small details, fl…Read more
It can not wait; we are leaving soon. Living nomadically gives you a sense of urgency. It wakes you up and forces you to decide and revise what is mo…Read more
What is a good life? What makes us happy? How do we succeed in doing the things that make for a good life and make us happy? Hiking in the rain, chan…Read more
It is not very interesting to drive on a highway in the rain, slowly, because of road construction. One of the delays was a 27 minutes queue deriving…Read more
There is something about the footpaths in England. At some point, a law was installed to protect the paths, allowing everyone to walk on the establis…Read more
Watching Britain in a park. The different people, their vibes and styles, and projects. I love to look at people. I was amused by observing most of t…Read more
It is not like the world will stop spinning until I am done thinking. Wouldn’t that be nice, though? If the planet would please stop spinning, the in…Read more