Winter Work

It’s Sunday — my day off, the one I look forward to each week.

The sun is shining, creating the illusion of warmth, though it does little to soften winter’s bite. The trees are bare now, stripped of leaves and flowers. The grass has faded to a muted brown, signalling a season of rest rather than growth.

And yet, even in these harsher conditions, there is still so much to learn. Secrets remain. Small, meaningful progress continues to present itself if I’m willing to notice it.

This change of season seems to have stirred a change in me as well. Not a sharp turn — more of a soft adjustment. A gentler approach. A kinder mindset that allows me to step back and see the wider landscape, instead of forcing myself endlessly up the same hill.

Training feels different in winter. The body tightens. Everything compresses. But within that contraction there is still space — just not the kind I’m used to. Growth hasn’t stopped; it has simply changed its shape.

Does that mean I’m growing?
Perhaps.

Only time will answer that properly. But I can say this: the last week of training has been the best I’ve had in quite some time.

The improvements weren’t dramatic. No obvious physical breakthroughs. Instead, something quieter appeared — a deeper understanding. One of those shifts that resists explanation, that lives more in feeling than language.

I’m starting to see differently. Think differently. Feel differently. Even the idea of success has changed shape, as if winter itself has bent my expectations into something more honest.

All of this seems to trace back to one very simple exercise.

Over the past two weeks, my coach has taken me back to the very beginning — to the fundamentals I thought I had already mastered — but this time approached with the mind and experience I carry now.

The effect has been surprising. Not sudden. Not flashy. Just a slow reordering of things I believed I already understood. Knowledge earned over time being quietly sorted, placed into new categories, forming a clearer picture of what lies ahead.

It feels humble. Subtle. Honest. Earned.

Until recently, I thought I understood growth. Transformation. But much of what I’d measured before were physical markers — signposts that kept me moving forward.

This is different.

Something shifted last week. Something internal and difficult to articulate. But it left me with a quiet certainty — that with patience and dedication, I will arrive exactly where I need to be.

Not somewhere grand.

Just a simple life, lived fully, and at peace.