Working With the Seasons of Your Life and Career

career mindfulness outside perspective

A quiet autumn landscape with a winding path, fallen leaves, and warm light symbolizing change, reflection, and new seasons

Modern life encourages us to make every month look the same: keep moving, stay productive, meet the deadline, and assume that if something isn't progressing, something must be wrong.

But nature doesn't work that way.

The seasons remind us that life moves in cycles. There are times for growth, times for harvesting, times for letting go, and times when things need to become quiet.

Our work as musicians, teachers, performers, and artists has these rhythms too. Sometimes we're building something that won't show results for months or even years. Sometimes something we've worked hard to create finally needs less effort and simply needs time, attention, and space to grow.

And sometimes, something has finished its season.

That can be difficult to recognize. We may continue maintaining a project, habit, commitment, or goal simply because we've been doing it for so long. But not everything needs to be carried into the next season.

There is also a season for doing nothing.

We tend to resist that kind of nothingness, especially when our calendars are full. Yet those quieter stretches are often where clarity arrives. We suddenly see the solution, understand what needs to change, or finally make a decision we've been circling for weeks.

So before you add another task to your list, pause and ask:

What are you sowing right now that may not show results for months?

What's already growing that doesn't need more effort from you right now?

What has had its season and could be released or cut back?

And what actually needs you to leave it alone?

Your career, creative work, and life don't have to move in a perfectly straight line. Allowing yourself to work with their seasons may create more clarity, energy, and space for whatever comes next.

I leave you with a Equinox gift, the Working in Seasons: A Scheduling Guide for Musicians Who Are Also Everything Else PDF.

Ixi

P.S. No pressure if this isn't your season for it. Some years you're sowing. It's never a race.

P.P.S. Want to read the field notes and table of contents for the Turning? Just reply and I'll send it along.