Just about two weeks ago, I realized life is too short—too short to be scared of writing into the void. Perhaps it was a feeling of anticipatory grief, perhaps it was the sliver of hope the ray of sunlight shining through the curtain gave me, perhaps it was Lydia Millen’s voice in her audiobook version of Evergreen telling me to not be scared to be an amateur at something. Whichever of these holds true—most likely it is all of those, because life is also too short to not be greedy—it lead to me setting up this blog. A space that I had been meaning to set up for a long time but never did: too little time, not enough ideas, too scared to be judged, laughed at for trying something big while feeling so small. I still feel those, except for the ideas maybe, though I do not believe I ever lacked those to begin with.

With The Quiet Seasons, I’m creating a space for all the words I’ve never shared before, a creative outlet to calm my mind, share my stories, and hopefully find others who cherish the calm of the country life, seasonal living, stories, and more. I didn’t want to limit myself in what I post here, so it will probably be a bit of everything. To keep everything in order, I have created three pages: The Lakes, which is where the essays go to die; The Trees for short stories, or serial story telling; and The House, where I share my thoughts, recipes, book reviews, and more from the “lifestyle” area.

While I don’t mind speaking into the void in peaceful solitude, I would be delighted to share this journey with you, have conversations, and share life experiences and stories.

For the record, because these conversations keep happening on social media: My writing is my own. My writing has never seen and will never see the soulless grasps of generative AI. Yes, I use em-dashes and Oxford commas (Always have, always will. I am obsessed with it but it’s an obsession that doesn’t hurt anyone). No, I will not refrain from doing so because Robocop uses them as well. If we give up our language in fear of being associated with generative AI, like Chat GPT, we lose part of ourselves, of our souls, and rob ourselves of the beauty the written word carries. Let’s not go without a fight.

Until next time,

TQS