LOTS of free reading below.
A new short story from S. C. Durbois coming next week in your inbox.
Dear Reader,
I learned the other day that late winter is the best time to prune plants. Why? Because the tree or vine is still asleep, and spring is just around the corner. The cut into a sleeping plant stimulates new life during a season of growth, allowing a fruitfulness the vine or tree never would have produced if the old branches remained.
Recently I’ve been studying up on money management, gaining financial literacy so I can plan for future abundance. In the various readings, I encountered a text that said the six people you spend the most time with is a portrait of your future. It makes sense: the people we spend the most time with deeply impact the person we are becoming. We will likely copy or run parallel to their habits of spending money, spending time, holding values, and maintaining thought patterns. So the obvious follow-up question is: do the people we spend the most time with accurately represent the people we want to become?
Over the seasons in my life, I’ve watched the landscape change, not just geographically but in the work I did, topics I dwelt on, and relationships I enjoyed. It’s late February and I’m watching the snowfall as I write to you, and I feel once again the shifting of a season. Pruning is not a painless process, and sitting on the verge of spring, heading towards a future version of fruitfulness, it is difficult and sad to have to let go, branch by branch, of the past.
But the consequences of holding onto the old when we’re ready for the new can be devastating. As a wise and somewhat ironic person once said, “Let go or be dragged.”
May the pruning of your winter seasons lead to fruitful abundance.