Imbolc is this weekend, followed by the new moon on Monday. Every sabbat has its own mood. This probably varies a lot from pagan to pagan, but the hours of daylight and the climate I live in heavily color the way each sabbat affects me, and Imbolc here carries no hint of spring. Because of that, it feels like a low point between the rebirth at Yule and the maturing of spring at Ostara–a time to take a deep breath and gather your will to keep trudging on through the dead of winter.

It seems fitting, then, that Imbolc finds me in the middle of a slew of unfinished projects–waiting for pictures to arrive in the mail, working through my yarn stash, learning how to run our D&D starter pack so we can play as a family. I’ll probably show and tell all of these as I get closer to being finished, but right now re-enchanting my life is mostly just waiting and work. That’s how it goes sometimes.

Back when I started with pagan practice I started, as so many of us do, with the cardinal directions and their elemental correspondences. I studied them heavily, and while I’ve slowly moved toward druidry and Hellenistic practices, I still often think in terms of air, fire, water, and earth. In the beginning I saw myself as mostly an ‘air and earth’ person and didn’t identify with fire at all. Fire is associated with will and passion and often equated with extraversion and career ambition, and I don’t identify with either of those.

But consistent practice really does deepen your understanding of both the outer world and your own inner world, and the more mindfulness I bring to this season of earth and stillness, the more I realize I hate sitting still. I’m great at thinking and doing (air and fire) and just terrible at being and feeling (earth and water). I can seem very earthy at times–solid, stable, immovable as a mountain–but I’m definitely a volcano, all fire inside. So this winter I’ve been trying to rest more, be more still, understand what that’s really about.

I’m not seeking balance in the “every element is equally represented” sense. I don’t think that’s necessary or even desirable for most people. Everyone has their own unique blend of elements, like a personal recipe. You might tweak the amount of flavoring or add an ingredient, but change it too much and it’s just not the same recipe. My personal recipe is heavy on thinking deeply and incorporating that thought into my actions, and if I flipped that on its head and devoted my life to fun and poetry I wouldn’t be me anymore. But tweaking the flavorings–understanding why the earth sits still, feeling the value of emotion and expression–might make me a better version of myself.

Alas, there’s not a real ending for this post. These are just half-baked thoughts with no real direction, but sometimes writing things down is a necessary step in my thought process, and it seems like the universe is telling me to use this weekend to take a breath and carry these thoughts forward in the hope of spring.