Cyclical time: planning by season, not by quarter

I spent years measuring my life in quarters before I noticed I'd never actually lived one. The fiscal calendar is a useful tool for businesses that need to compare themselves to each other, and I say that with affection, because reading that calendar is part of my work. But I was borrowing a rhythm that was never written for a human being, and at some point I wanted mine back.

A few years ago, I quietly replaced Q1 through Q4 with the four seasons, and I gave each one a question to hold.

The four questions

In winter, I ask what's ready to rest. I stop starting things. I take stock of what's still alive and what I've been carrying out of habit, and I let end what should have ended a while ago. Most of my hardest decisions get made in January, indoors, in the dark. I've learned to trust that darkness as a kind of soil.

In spring, I ask what's ready to move. I start one thing. Only one. The discipline is in refusing the second thing, even when the first is going well, because I know myself well enough by now to guard the season from my own appetite.

In summer, I ask what deserves my full attention. This is when I work the hardest and rest the deepest. The projects that have earned my care get all of it, and I've stopped apologizing for the ones that don't.

In fall, I ask what I'm ready to tell the truth about. Fall is when Aluna episodes get written and proposals get sent, when I sit with the year and say, plainly, what I think happened.

Why this is a finance question too

I used to think I'd have to defend this way of living in a room full of analysts. It turned out to be the most practical thing I've ever brought into a spreadsheet. When I build a financial model for a creative business, my first question is what the year actually looks like. When do you make the work? When do you sell it? When do you recover? Energy isn't linear, and revenue isn't either, and a model that pretends otherwise is a quiet blueprint for burnout. The model should be shaped around the life, never the life around the model.

What it has cost me

I won't pretend it has cost me nothing. Some speed. Certain rooms I was expected to be in. The occasional pull of envy when someone I admire ships three big things in one quarter. But I've stopped missing my year while living it. I finish things in the seasons they were ready to be finished. What I rushed never lasted, and what I let ripen has never left me.

Return, it turns out, is a form of planning. I just needed a calendar that would let me come back.

If you gave each of your seasons one question to hold, I wonder what they'd be.