Noticing the Small Things in a Season of Change
This has been a year of change for me. Some of those changes have been positive; others have been among the most challenging I’ve ever faced. I’ve felt elated. I’ve also felt anxious and overwhelmed.
What has helped me most is something deceptively simple: focusing on the small things in order to face the big ones.
When life feels unsteady, I try to ground myself by paying close attention to what’s right in front of me—the smell of the morning air, the roughness of bark beneath my fingers, the burst of sweetness when I eat a grape. Even the sound of my dog, Finn, when he’s attempting to communicate in what he clearly believes is human language.
These moments don’t solve anything on their own. But they steady me. And sometimes, that’s exactly what’s needed.
Grounding Through the Body
At times, I do a physical check-in—an intentional mental scan of my body, beginning at my toes and moving upward, focusing on each part in turn. I first learned this approach through Madhu Wangu’s Body Meditation practice, and it’s become a reliable way for me to return to the present moment.
You don’t need to be experienced with meditation for this to work. The act of directing your attention—on purpose, without judgment—can be surprisingly powerful. It’s less about “clearing your mind” and more about inhabiting your body fully, even for a minute or two.
Choosing How We Experience Time
For the New Year yet, I’ve been thinking about turning the page. Not in the sense of resolutions or reinvention, but in how I want to experience what’s ahead.
I want to make sure I’m building memories, not regrets.
We all have choices about how we spend our time, but we also have choices about how we notice time as it passes. We can rush through our days, mentally jumping from one task to the next, or we can move more intentionally—feeling, seeing, smelling, paying attention to what’s actually there.
The difference isn’t dramatic. It’s subtle. And it changes everything.
What Stories Teach Us About Attention
This idea of intentional noticing is something I return to often in my fiction.
In The Things We’ll Never Have, Marta is deliberate about how she looks at the world around her. She frames pieces of the landscape, choosing to really see what’s there rather than letting her mind blur past it in a casual glance.
And in From Ashes to Song, Pietro listens deeply to the sounds of the vineyard—the wind, the labor, the rhythm of family life—and longs to capture them in music. Those sounds hold his story, his heritage, and the magic of creating something meaningful together, from vine to fruit to wine to shared moments.
Stories remind us that attention is an act of love. What we choose to notice becomes what we carry with us.
Carrying This Forward
I know the year ahead will bring its own challenges. Life has a way of making sure of that. But when those moments arrive, I also know I can draw on these small, intentional pauses—tiny anchors that help me recharge and find the strength to keep going.
In fact, this way of moving through the world makes me feel quietly excited about what’s to come.
If you’d like, try this right now. Take a slow, deep breath, letting the air fill your lungs before releasing it gently. Lift your eyes from the screen. Notice what’s in front of you—the shapes, the colors, the quality of light. Let the details settle.
You may feel more grounded. You may not. Either way is fine.
There can be a wide range of emotions during the holidays—or during any busy or transitional season. Joy, exhaustion, loneliness, overwhelm, gratitude, longing. Sometimes all of them at once.
If you can, allow yourself to experience one moment fully, with all your senses. Perhaps there will be a subtle shift—an easing, a steadiness, an added layer of joy. Perhaps just a pause.
Those small moments matter. They’re how we meet what comes next—intentionally, and with care.