Nobody Told Spring
It's been spring for three weeks. I just noticed yesterday.
II walked out the back door yesterday afternoon to let the dog do his business and nearly tripped over spring.
There was a smell, actual smell, not the absence-of-winter smell I'd been getting for weeks, and the lilac at the corner of the yard had done that thing where it turns from a bundle of sticks into something alive when you weren't paying attention. A robin was doing its job in the driveway. The maple by the fence had leaves. Leaves. Tiny ones, but leaves.
It has been spring for three weeks, technically. I had missed all of it.
This is not a brag, by the way. It's the opposite of a brag. I run a website called Everyday Anchors. I have a dog whose entire personality depends on being outside. And still, somewhere between the equinox and the third week of April, a whole season had arrived at my door, knocked politely, and been ignored.
The Office Worker's Spring Problem
Here's the thing nobody puts on a Hallmark card: if you work indoors in Canada or northern Europe, spring is something that mostly happens to other people. You leave the house in the dark-ish, sit at a desk for nine hours, and emerge into a world that, if you're lucky, is maybe three degrees warmer than it was in February. The trees haven't done anything yet. The sky is the same committee-grey it's been since November. "Spring" is a rumour being circulated by weather apps.
And so the first weeks of the season pass, the good weeks, the quiet unfolding ones, while we are deep inside the fluorescent cathedral of our careers, responding to a message from someone named Kate about a deck for Q3.
By the time we look up, it's May, everything is already green, and we've missed the part of spring that's actually interesting: the becoming. The tentative, half-committed, awkward-teenager phase where the world is figuring out if it's going to bother this year.
Why This Matters More Than It Sounds
There's a thing that happens when you miss seasons for long enough: you start to experience the year as weather, instead of as time. December is cold. July is hot. April is... April-ish. The texture disappears., one year blends into the next because you weren't paying enough attention to notice the differences.
I spent a long time living this way. Twenty years on the road in the sales business means I mostly saw seasons through what arrived in the walk-in fridge, asparagus means one thing, tomatoes mean another. It was a relationship with seasons, but it was a transactional one. The seasons did their work, I did mine, and we met briefly at the loading dock.
What I didn't understand then, and am still clumsily learning now, is that noticing the season you're actually in is one of the most underrated practices available to a desk-bound person. Not in a wellness way, in a "you only get so many Aprils" way.
What I'm Going to Try This Week
I'm going to start going outside at 2pm.
Not for a walk, not for a workout, and not for anything productive. Just for five minutes, once a day, at the point in the afternoon when Zoom has started to feel personal. Stand in the yard, notice what's different from yesterday, report back to the dog, who already knows.
The forecast for this week, in case you're interested: two days of sun, three days of the kind of grey that isn't committing to anything, one day that will probably surprise us. This is extremely normal for late April. It's also, I think, kind of the point, spring isn't a destination you arrive at in a flowered sundress or shorts. It's a slow, negotiated process where the world slowly agrees to try again.
Most of us don't need another productivity system. We need to go outside for five minutes at 2pm on a Tuesday and notice that the lilac has buds.
📝 A Small Anchor to Try This Week
Pick one window. The one you look out of the most, probably. Between now and next Sunday, take thirty seconds at roughly the same time each day to actually look out of it. Not scroll past it on the way to the coffee machine. Look at it, notice what's changed since yesterday, that's the whole practice.
Bonus points if the dog is involved, she almost certainly already knows what's going on and would be happy to brief you.
This was the first entry in The Journal. There will be a new one every other Saturday, alongside the weekly Sunday Reset newsletter, one honest letter, send out every Saturday evening, with one small anchor to try that week. No ads, no nonsense, no one trying to sell you a spring cleanse.
Or tell me: what's the first sign of spring wherever you are? The comments are open, and I read every one.
Everyday Anchors is a personal publication, not a clinic. I'm a certified coach with a long food-industry background — not your doctor, therapist, or physical therapist. Everything here is for inspiration and good conversation. If something you're dealing with is serious, please talk to someone qualified to actually see you.