10 Weeks of Winter
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
A journal style blog exploring the pleasure and enjoyment of winter.
recent posts
start from the beginning
First Post — 10 Weeks of Winter: An Introduction
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- 10 Weeks of Winter Project
- Christmas
- Cleaning and Clearing
- Coziness
- Creativity and Inspiration
- Health and Wellness
- Making Change
- Recipes
- Week 1
- Week 10
- Week 2
- Week 3
- Week 4
- Week 5
- Week 6
- Week 7
- Week 8
- Week 9
- Winter Food
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the author
Michelle is an American born Canadian resident of the Pacific Northwest, hobby writer, book lover, and generally of the autodidact polymath smattering of knowledge, skills, and interests.
Category: 10 Weeks of Winter Project
Posts detailing the plans and concepts behind the 10WeeksofWinter.com blog and updates on progress, performance, modifications, and reviews.
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The light returns… It’s been a week since wrapping up my 10 Weeks of Winter project, and what would be the point of running this experiment without conducting a review? 10 Weeks of Winter was my attempt to reclaim my favorite season throughout the darkest parts of the winter. In recent years I had been…
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Aging… I’m not yet in the “winter of my life”, but I am in early autumn. As the seasons and cycles of life take me toward my favorite time of year, I’m learning how to embrace the changes to my body, my appearance, and my wellbeing. I’ve never been a person to focus much on…
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Respiration… As the river flows, as the waves roll in and out from the shore, as branches sway, as winter comes and winter goes, so the breath moves through my being. Sometimes imperceptibly so. Sometimes as a squeezing or as a wide-opening force. No matter how it shows up, it’s always connected, to everything. How…
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Moving meditation… Step-by-step through sways and shifts walking stimulates a forward moving continual rebalancing. Legs swing out from the hips, articulating at the knee, and grounding through the ankle to the toes. Arms pump or sway or hang at the sides with moderate motion from the shoulders reaching down and out through the fingertips. The…
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It’s coldest before the spring… That old expression, “it’s darkest before the dawn”, imparts figurative meaning from a kind of literal truth. But taken literally it should really say, “it’s coldest before the dawn” to get at the core of the matter. Night brings absence, and in that absence the remains of energy waft away…
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Write what you know… Anyone who has dabbled in writing has probably heard the common words of wisdom (often from wannabe or non-writers) “write what you know”. This little germ of insight, like most overused platitudes, carries a grain of truth in its banal and nearly meaningless foil packaging. If you take the aphorism literally…
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The grind… The passive intent of my 10 Weeks of Winter project has been to habituate myself to regular writing. Like many writers (or aspiring writers) I have experimented with daily writing practices, like morning pages and daily prompts, and generally to my benefit. A daily writing practice really does build up a kind of…
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Rule of threes… Today marks the end of the first third of my 10 Weeks of Winter project and the beginning of the remaining two-thirds. I discussed the challenge inherent in thirds last week in the post Thirds of Change, but there is another aspect of thirds to consider when benchmarking, building, composing, or creating…
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Peace… Stillness and dark surround and fill the sleeping places. Bodies rouse to the suddenness of an alarm, warming internal temperature, or with brief attachment to the remaining reels of dreams that flash by and are forgotten. Wakefulness comes to the mind, whether wanted or not. The dark and quiet are soothing and call the…
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Trains in winter… There’s something captivating about trains in winter. Picture this, the snow-streaked blue and white ridgeline of a mountain pass borders the pale blue sky. In the river valley a conifer forest grows right up to the rocky vertical slopes of the mountains. The river flows like blue crystal between snow mounded banks.…