Winter work and summer medals

Read time: 2 min 16 sec

Whatup Reader!

Full transparency, I had zero motivation to write this email.

I put it off all day, and when I finally forced myself to sit down and tackle it, I somehow found myself on B&H’s website reading the reviews of a deeply discounted heavy-duty wall-mounted boom arm. Spoiler, I bought it.

It was 66 degrees yesterday, on the second day of December, which is precisely why I chose to move to southern California back in 2016. The endless summer temps however don’t negate the sun going down at 4:30pm and the very real feeling that it’s still winter and I just want to be wintering, aka doing nothing.

Rachel Strickland, my sister from another mister, shared the following tweet in her Stories yesterday, and I immediately stood up and shouted, “Hallelujah!”

Ya’ll already know that I don’t mess with the cold, but winter in general just ain’t my bag.

If you like to be all up in the snow, bundled in eleventy billion layers, absolutely MOAR power to you. I’m never here to yuck anybody’s yum.

What I am here to do is remind all of you fine folks that seasonality is a very real thing, and one season’s rest allows for another season’s spoils.

If you’ve got shit to do, by all means, go get it done. I simply want to remind you that rest is a very important part of getting shit done.

I realize that I’ve got folks from around the world as part of this Maestro Mail family, which means that some of you reading this email are actually heading into summer. Lucky bastards.

Your good fortune makes for an even better segue:

“You earn your medals in the winter and collect them in the summer.” – Kyle Randalls, Strongman.

Sometimes the winter work is rest. Sometimes the winter work is building a base and solidifying the foundation.

Either way, the rewards of that work are rarely, if ever, experienced while the work is being done.

I think that we all understand this concept when it comes to online business, or when it comes to physical pursuits. I’d like to take a moment and ask that you consider extending that same grace period to your efforts related to doing the work to build the world that you want to live in.

The conversations that you’ve started having more of, the way that you’re showing up in spaces, the pushback that you’re giving where once you’d let things slide…winter work that you very likely won’t see the fruits of for many summers.

Keep going.

We show up and do the work not because the outcome is guaranteed, but to be able to say that we did everything we could.

“Look closely at the present you are constructing; it should look like the future you are dreaming.” - Alice Walker

Happy Tuesday, Reader.

Maestro out.

Do the thing.