Between Resolution and Frost: Writing in Winter Time

Since redesigning my website, I made myself a solemn promise: publish more often. At least twice a week. Rhythm. Structure. Discipline. It seemed only logical. If you want to stay visible, you have to remain visible.

A fine resolution, but reality tends to push back.

Working hours drain energy

During the week, my job absorbs a great deal of energy. Not so much the work itself, but mainly the hours. They carve up the day. When I get home, I want absolutely nothing for a moment. No keyboard. No ideas. No SEO checks or sentences that could be tightened just a little more.

Just rest.

And somewhere, that tension lingers. Because I want to write. I want to build my platform. On my about me page I explain why I do this. On my blog overview I see the space between publications. Those empty gaps sometimes feel like quiet reproaches.

But perhaps they are not reproaches at all. Perhaps they are pauses.

Watching as if you’re on the ice yourself

At the same time, there is plenty that inspires. The Olympic Winter Games, for example.

I find myself lingering on athletes who give everything. On unexpected Dutch successes. On that one perfect race where everything aligns. But perhaps even more so on the way we experience it now.

Drones flying alongside. Cameras that seem almost embedded in the ice. Footage from the athlete’s own perspective. As if you were standing on the skates yourself. As if the stadium crowd were cheering you on.

Watching becomes almost feeling.

There is something fascinating about that. Technology not only changes how we follow sport, but how deeply we are involved in it. Where we once depended on a single fixed camera angle, we now receive a total experience. As if the distance between sofa and rink, or mountain peak, has never been smaller.

Perhaps that is what writing can do as well: reduce distance.

A winter that lingers

And then there is winter here.

Snow. Cold. Days that remain suspended in shades of grey. An old-fashioned winter, without a doubt. Beautiful too.

I am quite ready for it to be over.

Cold toes. Scraping ice from the windscreen in the morning. That moment when you think daylight is breaking, only to realise it is simply another shade of grey.

Yet there is something contradictory about it. Outside, spring may arrive whenever it likes. Indoors, on television, winter can linger a little longer. The combination is almost comical.

The real winter demands gloves. The winter on television only asks for attention.

Inspiration is not the problem

Perhaps that is the key.

There is no shortage of inspiration. Sport. Seasons. Work. Rhythm. Silence. Everything provides material. The problem is not a lack of things to say. The problem is that sometimes they need to rest for a while.

Like snow.

First it drifts down softly. Then it settles. Untouched. Quiet. Until the moment comes when you have to move through it. Because you need to go to work. Because the path must be cleared. Because standing still is not an option.

Perhaps the same is true of writing.

Sometimes an idea needs to disappear beneath a thin layer of cold. Not gone. Only temporarily out of sight. Until movement returns. Until words emerge that do not feel forced, but natural.

No strict schedule, but rhythm

Publishing twice a week? It remains a fine ambition. And who knows, perhaps it will happen. But maybe the real gain lies not in the number of articles, but in continuing to return.

Not because you have to. But because there is something to say.

And believe me: there almost always is.

Only sometimes… it needs to rest a little longer.