If you live in the northern hemisphere, the days have become their shortest, with time still to go before they get longer again. That darkness can definitely be a cosy thing, with blankets in the evenings, warm drinks in your hands, perhaps a fireplace crackling (real or not) before you. It can be a time to let yourself unwind, to ease into the winter, and let the darkness outside warm you within.
It can also be a hindrance. Going to and from work without any sun (which can be especially difficult for those with a seasonal affective disorder), frost freezing your car and the roads, the cold and the wet outside making it hard to want to leave your home, there’s a lot of negativity that can be associated with this time of year, a lot of easy ways to find the dark.
Shorter days can mean shorter amounts of productivity too. That productivity can be in short supply because it can be difficult to motivate yourself when the days are short, dark, and pretty freezing. Maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing, maybe it encourages you to take a rest, crack the heating on, give your mind a break as you eat lots of chocolate and gingerbread. Maybe it’s the world’s way of telling you to take it easy, and that it’s okay if you do that. Because it IS okay if you do that.
Of course, when you’re pursuing creative endeavours, that can be a tricky thing; the days get shorter for half of the year, so it’s not like you can take half of the year off, even if you might want to.
So feeling like taking a break as the days draw in isn’t always the easiest feeling, especially when you’ve set yourself goals. This can be the time where you might feel like a final sprint is needed to complete the things you had set yourself in January. If the dark nights stall your creativity, a sprint is the last thing you want to do, maybe even the last thing you can do.
However, there are some ways the dark nights can help you creatively. If the days are dark and it’s not so pleasant to go outside, is there a better excuse or time to stay indoors and get writing, or creating in any format that you should choose? There are definitely ways that the autumn and winter period can help you creatively, because if there’s no pressure to leave your house, you can use that missing pressure (in a positive and healthy way, of course!) to create. Or maybe, if you’re someone who writes in cafes or other public spaces, those cosier atmospheres can be incredibly beneficial; warm interiors as you watch the biting winds assault people outside might be just what you need to get those creative juices flowing, perhaps even better than they would in the summer.
As per usual, it’s about that balance, isn’t it? Using the dark nights for motivation where you can find it, and letting it be the reason you rest if that’s what the world is trying to tell you too. Which you listen to is, ultimately, up to you. If you listen to your conscience, you press on, you write, maybe feeling a bit of pressure or maybe even guilt to get more done. If you listen to the world, you give yourself a break, you take that time to let your mind rest and recuperate, maybe feeling a bit of guilt about not doing more. Either way, you can see the negatives or the positives, it’s how you decide to look at things that determines what these months will mean for you.
For me personally, I’m more in the hindrance category so far this time around. I’ve definitely been struggling as the mornings and nights get darker. It can feel different every year, you never know how exactly the season and its weather might affect you. It’s impacted by all the other things you’ve got going on as well, it won’t just be the weather that’s making motivation hard, everything that’s going on in your life will compound to create whatever effect it’s going to. That might be why, some years, the darker nights don’t affect you at all, and, other times, it might feel like you’ll never be able to find motivation ever again.
As we all should be, I’ve been trying to be kind to myself, because there’s almost nothing worse for your creativity than frustration and cruelty. If I can encourage some creativity out of me, then that’s an excellent thing to celebrate in these darker, shorter days. Equally, if I’m struggling and can only manage things that I would view as less productive, then that’s something to celebrate too, even if it doesn’t necessarily feel like it; on some wintry days, it’s enough to get out of bed and face the day. It doesn’t have to be something more if that something more is simply out of reach.
It’s also important not to view all our endeavours as productive or unproductive, either one or the other. I mentioned in a recent post that our time doesn’t have to be used to always push forward, that every second of the day doesn’t exist just for us to be productive in the things we’re chasing. That rise and grind mindset isn’t really the healthiest, and it’s really crucial that you take care of yourself, and that these darker months aren’t used as a punishment to make you feel bad about not getting more done or not having gotten as much done in the year as you had planned. So categorising everything you do as either productive or unproductive isn’t going to be very helpful, especially when these shorter days can already be so cruel; it’s okay simply to exist, you don’t ever have to do more or be more to be worthy of your life.
There isn’t all that long until the end of the year now, the countdown to 2027 has well and truly begun. If you’re committing to a final sprint in these last days of the year, you have all my luck. If you’re deciding to take it easy and let these days roll by until the New Year, I wish you all the peace in the world. I can’t lie, I’m always aiming for the former, but I’ll tell myself to be kind if the latter ends up happening instead.
Robyn x
