The Seasonal Slice: Thoughts on time, celebrating 1 year on Substack, + a round-up of autumnal joys 🍁
Cup Half Full turns 1! 🎉On slowing down, wins, learns, pie, & more
I always get sentimental around birthdays and really just love any reason to celebrate, sooo naturally I’m quite excited to celebrate 1 year of Cup Half Full! 🎉😊🌻
THANK YOU to all who have joined me here! 💖
Something NEW for you today: From now on, I’ll be sending out seasonal round-up/mish-mash/conglomerations sharing a little slice of my world, updates, and what’s inspiring me of late in the realm of natural health & slow living. I hope you enjoy and as always, I’d love to hear from you!
Reflecting on the first year of Cup Half Full
Time is funny …and serious. It can slip through our fingers like water or seemingly be still with all stubbornness of a great stone.
As a child, I agonised over my wait to become a “grown-up”. I dawdled the days away with after school activities, crafts, lots of farm chores, and an overzealous imagination about how *important* I’d feel as an adult. Little did I know then how much I’d eventually think back on my childhood and reminisce about the feeling of so much time stretching out before me. Since my mid-twenties, time has seemed to speed up in general. Now, in motherhood, a single day can be both excruciatingly slow and gone in the blink of an eye.
The wonderful Maria Popova wrote an article called Unlocking the Mysteries of Time, that I stumbled across recently. It overviews various theories on time perception such as The Holiday Paradox and the idea that perhaps time feels slower when we are young because each day constitutes a greater proportion of our overall lifespan at that point, than in does when we are much older. I highly recommend reading it but the key point in the article for me was that while time is considered a reliable “reality” by most, we have the ability to control how we experience it - and that means everything.
I recently saw a short clip of Elon Musk talking about how he tends to not think in full “days” but in hours. I winced a little at this, knowing that he was probably about to underpin a brand of hyper-productivity (that I don’t necessarily). But, as I mulled it over it occurred to me…
The more I embrace a natural lifestyle and am gentle with my schedule and expectations, the more my awareness and perception of time seems to recalibrate - heal even. The once glacially tedious moments that I’ve anxiously avoided may now receive fair appraisal beside more naturally pleasant ones - much in the way one’s palette expands with maturity. I now reach not only for the thrilling and sweet experiences but the slow savoury ones too. Taking the reins of time may sound tricky, but it’s really just about tuning in to what we can control, whilst simultaneously letting go of what we can’t. Like many forms of self-discipline, it really helps keep the garden rosey.
A new friend here in the Substack community,
, wrote a great article awhile back about embracing discomfort and why we need it. From choosing to build and live in a tiny house, to pursuing a medical degree, and moving across the world, my decision to take the longer and more difficult path, much like Sophie, hasn’t always been deliberate - more often an urge from someplace inside that has always known just how much challenge I could meet and benefit from, without breaking. With each leap of faith and each choice to trust in faith and the rewards of discipline, I’ve learned to befriend both time and challenge… mostly ;-)Today, as I think back on a day, a week, a year, I’m joyful to recall moments of all shapes and sizes in this phase of life:
Showing Pumpkin my homeland and dipping his pudgy toes into the Pacific Ocean.
His birth.
The ordinary autumn light glowing through the maple leaves like nature’s own stained glass window.
The sound of birdsong in the dark this morning.
A rare taste of fresh tamales and mesquite bread shared with family.
Snapping a photograph I know I’ll treasure for decades.
Publishing my first post.
I’d love to know, if you feel like sharing!
⭐️Wins & Learns on Substack
I’m unabashedly proud of creating my own little fun and quirky space in the corner of the internet and consistently showing up bi-weekly despite all the chaos that is new motherhood. It’s been fun. It’s been work. It’s been well worth it! To anyone interested in taking a creative leap - I promise, you’ll grow wings on the way down!
I’m especially grateful to
, Kutovakika, , and many others for inspiring me to start my own creative *thing*. While things around here are still taking shape, I couldn’t be more excited about what the next year will bring. So far, these are the major wins & learns:Perspective. Writing, writing, writing… (AND editing) is a never-ending art and process through which I’m growing and discovering new ways of looking at life and essentially how to better sort out the good bits and chuck the bad.
Numbers. I thought that growth would be something that would haunt me, and it did for a while, but somewhere in the middle of the year I realised that like I’d rather have 100 truly engaged subscribers than 1,000 indifferent ones. The truth is, I believe I’m still finding my footing here and with the experimentation comes slow growth. I’m ever so grateful for all who enjoy my work and especially thankful for the support of my paid subscribers.💖
Kindred Spirits. I’ve met so many interesting souls through Substack and means the world to me, to have a newfound way of connecting with others, as I begin my 7th year as an expat - a journey that has taught me the true value of community.
Vision. In the early days here, I had a certain vision for Cup Half Full but the realities of life with a small human and other work made me doubt whether I could achieve really my ideal and I started to get frustrated. I began to doubt and dabble with changing my original vision and (thankfully) realised this was a mistake. A much better course would be… to stay the course, albeit slowly. One example, was whether to continue using primarily my own photography or to bring in the (more appealing) work of others. While it may have changed the look of things, possible for the better, it just wasn’t me and therefore I couldn’t settle. I hope you’ll all cheer my on as I …to improve my own photo
My favorites
For those new around here, here are a few you may have missed over the last year.
Slow autumnal inspiration list:
Food: Below you’ll find a quick video of my latest blackberry-pie-streusel creation. I am by no means a recipe creator, and you’ll notice that there is little precision involved in my method but I’ve been fiddling with this recipe for a while and it’s the perfect fall desert.
Someone who IS a recipe creator and all around food goddess:
, creator of here on Substack. Somehow Justine manages to keep things very down to earth but still elevated, while creating food that is simple, wonderful, and often seasonal. …Oh, and her IG reels are quite entertaining.
Did anyone else delight in fig and chanterelle season as much as I did? Fun: Harvest Events
A great motivation to get out of the house, even in soggy weather, is to go to a local event. While I’m not much of a Halloween person, I enjoy a good corn maze, pumpkin carving and fresh cider! I particularly enjoy our local Apple & Garden Festival - we won’t talk about how many pounds of apples I came home with this year!😉🍎
Wanted: Fungi furniture & wool skirts
Art: Michael Sowa, Kohler’s Pig, 1995.
Michael Sowa is a German artist known for painting whimsical animals, including some of those in the 2001 film Amélie. I know this is more of a “summer” scene but in recent years I’ve been embracing cold plunges year around and it’s incredibly invigorating! If this little pig doesn’t make you want to run outside and seize the day, I don’t know what will.
What would you like to see more of from Cup Half Full?
If you enjoyed this, please help others find it by sharing! 💖
Wow, a year already! I can hardly imagine Substack without you anymore and I’m so glad you are here 🧡
A year already? Time flies! I want one of those mushroom stools they are too cute 🥺