What needs pruning right now?

Overing often shows up this time of year dressed as responsibility, which is why pruning matters: not everything asking for your energy is yours to keep carrying. Choosing one honest thing to release can create room for what matters most and interrupt the habit of mistaking exhaustion for integrity.

I got weeds growing on top of weeds already. So I’m already in full spring-pruning mode. Metaphorically and literally. When you make a commitment to a dream or goal, you can bet all the weed seeds will bloom in a very overing way. That’s okay. We got this. It’s not regression or failure. It's an opportunity for clarity.

I want to come back to one question from the reflection in my blog post on spring energy and mini-cycles because this is exactly the point in the spring or semester when many people start disappearing into overing:

What needs to be pruned to make room for what matters most?

This is the time when overing can look incredibly reasonable. There are real deadlines, real needs, and real people depending on you. The work is intense, and the pressure to keep pace can make over-functioning feel responsible, even admirable, instead of what it often is: a pattern of self-abandonment that gets rewarded because it helps institutions keep going.

That is why I return to the metaphor of pruning. Not because it is tidy or pretty. It’s not. Every season when I prune the raspberry patch brambles, I don't leave unscathed. Each year, though, I get more skilled and have better tools and gloves. That’s what I want for you also! 

Pruning asks something honest of us. It asks: Are you prepared? Do you have the tools you need? Do you know what needs to be removed? Do you know what’s healthy to continue to stay? Can you identify the potential of what’s likely to bloom next? (It’s a practice of past, present, and future orientations without living in any one dominantly.)

So here is the practice I want to offer you this week.

Make a list of what feels heaviest right now, that has that not-quite-right energy. That might include tasks, expectations, relationships, decisions, or forms of emotional labor that are taking up more space than you want to admit.

Then sit with that list for a moment and ask yourself: what here is actually mine to carry? What am I doing because no one else stepped up, or does it as well as I do? What am I continuing because I have been taught that care means overextending? What has become so familiar that I have stopped questioning whether it should still have access to my energy at all?

From there, choose ONE thing to prune.

Not because one thing fixes everything, but because one deliberate act of release can interrupt the momentum of overing. Pruning is about refusing to confuse exhaustion with integrity.