Flipping the Script on “I Can’t Wait Until…” Season

This essay originally appeared in the Monday morning newsletter on 5/4/22.

How’s the weather where you are? 

Is it warm? 

Is it sunny? 

If so, can you please send me pictures to remind me what it’s like?? For me, I’ve reached the point in my calendar I call ‘I can’t wait until ___ season.’
(Otherwise known as “spring”)

I can’t wait until it’s consistently warm in a few weeks and I can leave my apartment without a jacket.

I can’t wait until all the trees have leaves and the flower beds are in full bloom. 

I can’t wait until I can move my sweaters and boots out of my closet! 

Personally, I find spring hard to get through. I think it’s because – at least in Chicago – it feels like month 6 of winter. There are a few glorious days where temps reach 60, 70, and even 80 degrees (!), but without fail, the weather will swing back to a chilly and gray 30-40 degrees. 

I know it sounds funny to put such an emphasis on the weather, but I can’t deny the impact it has on my mood. The good thing about spring though is that those handful of glorious days do remind you of just how close you are to summer. Thus, I find myself start thinking the “I can’t wait until…” narrative and wishing I could fast forward this next month.

But that’s no way to live, right? 

I was thinking about this last week and something I read earlier this year in Katie Couric’s memoir Going There came to mind. I loved listening to Katie’s book. I found it extremely compelling and honest and filled with personal anecdotes of the amazing experiences she’s had. 

But at the same time, it felt harrowing to listen to some parts. Because she’s lived such a public life and been open with some of the tragedies she’s faced (losing her first husband and her sister to cancer, various things with her career), as a reader, I sometimes winced as I listened to parts of the book. It was that weird experience of knowing what’s around the corner, but not being able to warn the protagonist. I wonder what it felt like for her to write it…

For example, early on in the book, she writes about having her second daughter Carrie and cuddling in bed with her and her other daughter, with her first husband in the other room. 

She writes, “‘This is what happiness feels like,’ I thought. With two little girls and all four of our parents alive and thriving, we were in the happiness bubble, buffered generationally by the people we loved most in the world.” 

In the next chapter, she goes on to say, “If only I’d had a little warning, enough time to say, ‘remember this feeling’ because it’s all going to get swept up in an instance.” (Very sadly, her first husband passed away from cancer when Carrie was only 1)

And while she refers to things as being “picture-perfect” during this time, she’s also honest about what she was struggling with and what worries consumed her.

That part of the book really resonated with me. With the gift of hindsight, it’s easy for me to look back on times in my life and wish I could tell myself, “Remember this feeling.” The times (thankfully) aren’t correlated to something tragic happening, but rather, they are just times I wish I could teleport back to – for just a day – to relive some treasured ordinary moments. Like remembering what it felt like when my brothers and I were all living at home and going to the same school, or when I would call my grandma in between classes at college, or being 22 and discovering Chicago with my childhood best friend who lived here at the time. Things were never “picture-perfect,” but there were certainly moments of picture-perfect goodness. When I think back on those times, I don’t think about what worries I was preoccupied with, but rather I find myself wishing I would’ve been more present and appreciative of those everyday, ordinary things. 

So yes, I am supremely excited for summer. But upon reflection, I don’t want to get caught up in the “I can’t wait until…” narrative and wish away these next couple of weeks. While I don’t expect things to be picture-perfect (especially because I’m writing this right after I checked my forecast for the week ahead… ;)), I do expect some picture-perfect moments. And I want to be more present and fully experience those.

To do so, there’s three things I’m going to rely on for help: 

1. My trusty Calendar of Good: I’ve written about this wall calendar before. But it’s worth mentioning again because I believe it’s paramount to getting out of the “I can’t wait until…” narrative. The calendar includes a place for you to write down one positive moment at the end of every day, forcing you to slow down and notice the good of today. I started using it in February of this year and am loving it, but last week I took things up a notch. I hung up the calendar next to my desk as a physical reminder of the need to look for the good of today. 
2. Thinking about what I would put in a “scrapbook of now”: This idea comes from author Gretchen Rubin, who says research shows that one of the best ways to make ourselves happier in the present is to remember happy times from the past. One of her ideas to do so is to make a “scrapbook of now,” where you preserve photos of the ordinary things that will be fascinating in the future, like how your room was decorated, what your grocery story looked like inside, what you wore to work. I thought it sounded like a fun idea and it prompted me to think about what ordinary things I would document from my life right now. It reminded me that one day I’ll likely look back on things like my apartment, my current routine, my running path and wish I could experience them again, just for a day. So, while they are still in my grasp, I want to appreciate them more now. 
3. Directing my attention to… my attention. I don’t mean to get “meta” with you before you’ve had your coffee :), but there’s something I read in the book Four Thousand Weeks that still resonates with me on this topic. When writing about the challenge of living more fully in the present, the author writes that a more “fruitful approach” is to start with “noticing that you are, in fact, always already living in the moment anyway, whether you like it or not.” It feels funny to type that out because it’s so simple… but it’s true! Where is my attention right now? Is it on the complaints about the weather or wistful thoughts about time speeding up? What about if I instead re-directed it to just what’s happening right now, in this very moment? Where you direct your attention has powerful impacts. As Mary Oliver wrote, “attention is the beginning of devotion.”  

What do you think? Do you have anything you rely on to help you stay present in the here and now?

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