If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you might have noticed that I keep mentioning a video by a creator on Tiktok about “sunset seasons”. I don’t feel that my short summaries in the caption of my posts do it justice. So, I thought I would summarize it here. Additionally, I’d like to come up with a way to honor and reflect on the sunsets in my life.

Here is the original video by Sierra Campbell (siececampbell on Tiktok) https://www.tiktok.com/@siececampbell/video/7197600105673887019?lang=en&q=sunset%20seasons&t=1676396538088

Here is my summary of the video:

What is a “sunset season”?

A sunset season is a period of transition. The sun is going down on the life you’re familiar with, the known, and you are transitioning into the unknown. Some examples of this would be graduating college and staring your new life, ending a relationship and moving on, getting pregnant and preparing for parenthood, or anything where the sun is setting on a significant period in your life.

What can you do to make it a “good sunset season”?

There are 3 things required to make it a good sunset season.

Ritual – Celebrating and honoring the end. Some common ones are graduation, having a baby shower, or throwing a going away party. However, you can come up with your own.

Reflection – Reflecting on the experience. A few ideas she came up with: write down everything you’ve learned, list what you’re grateful for, or just taking a thoughtful, honest look at everything to help bring you closure and move you forward into your next season.

Preparation – Getting ready for your new season. In order to prepare for the next stage, you can do this by reading up on the experience (some examples would be parenting, pregnancy). In her example about pregnancy, she mentioned writing notes to your future child/children. I would add, you could create vision boards/dream boards or come up with a 1 year plan.

Essentially, the formula is 2 parts looking back and 1 part looking forward so you can make the transition as smooth as possible.

Now that I’ve summarized the video, here’s how I’d like to incorporate it into my life.

What are some things I need the sun to set on?

Career, relationship, recovering from an illness, death, family stuff, and just a general negative feeling about myself.

How would I like to do this?

For my rituals, I would like to throw a party when it’s an appropriate. In other cases, I think my own spiritual practice or ceremony would be a good substitute in lieu of a celebration.

I think reflection will be the easiest for me, although at times, the hardest. My mind can be a beautiful place to be, on occasion, a terrible place. I’ve had this lifelong love affair with writing; one of my earliest career ambitions was to be a writer. From the moment I could hold a pencil, I was scribbling away at a story. By the age of 8, I was writing essays and short, little books. As I grew older, I always worried that I never knew enough to write about anything. I read whatever I could get my hands on, starting with dictionaries and medical encyclopediae. I added a Philosophy degree to my education, hoping it would offer me some insight into this life–if anything, it taught me how to ask better questions.

I’ve spent my life waiting for this great accumulation of knowledge to prepare me to be an author. If there’s any lessons to be had about learning or education, it’s that we could always have more of it and there will never enough. There will never be the perfect conditions where you know everything. The minute you believe that, your mind becomes stagnant. So, writing it is. Probably here.

As for preparation, I’m an avid reader. It’s rare that I own an object that I haven’t pored over the instructional manual for. It’s most likely that reading up on a subject will be my first choice. I’d also like to come up with a plan or create a vision board for my next sunrises. I also love using planners, the physical, in real life ones, compared to any online or digital option. So, that will definitely aid the process.

The first topic I’d like to let the sun set on is my career as an educator. I’m wrapping up some projects and getting ready to go on the job market and I could use the closure.

What season are you in?

(The featured image is one of my favorites. It’s a sunset from May 2022 where the clouds look like some sort of surrealist painting and the sky is my favorite color palette, blue with a gradient of white, pink, and lavender clouds. This was taken in Bishop, CA)