No Reason Season
A Reflection Guide for the Weary and Wondering
What if doing less could help us be more?
In a world that constantly demands more—more work, more achievement, more hustle—how do we learn to pause? Kate sits down with her sister Maria Bowler, a writer, creativity coach, and spiritual director, to talk about the pressures of the “producer self,” that voice inside us all that equates our worth with what we do, fix, or achieve.
This is your invitation into No Reason Season—a time to create, rest, and live without performance. Inspired by Kate Bowler & Maria Bowler’s conversation, this reflection guide is a small step toward living with more gentleness and less hustle.
No goals. No metrics. No self-improvement projects. Just presence.
1. Meet Your Producer Self
“All a producer can do is do.” —Maria Bowler
When does your inner hustle monster show up? What does it expect from you?
When do you feel like your worth is tied to your productivity?
What emotions come up when you stop “doing”?
2. Redefine Rest
“If we don’t rest on purpose, our bodies will find ways to rest without our permission.” —Maria Bowler
What kind of rest are you actually craving right now—physical, emotional, spiritual?
3. Procrastinate *On Purpose*
“If you’re lying down and beating yourself up, it’s procrastination. If you’re lying down and it feels good, it’s rest.” —Maria Bowler
Try this: Pick something you usually beat yourself up for—scrolling, staring out the window, organizing your junk drawer—and do it on purpose. Notice how it feels.
What do you notice when the shame is removed?
4. Create Without a Reason
“If the result was never going to come… would you still do it?” —Maria Bowler
What’s something small you’d love to do—just because? Gardening? Doodling? Playing piano badly? Noodling?
Now schedule it. Seriously. Put it on your calendar. Label it “No Reason Season.”
5. Remember Who You Are
“The presence you have when you’re feeling the most like yourself… is who you really are.” —Maria Bowler
What are you doing when you feel most like yourself?
Want to Go Deeper?
Read Making Time: A New Vision for Crafting a Life Beyond Productivity by Maria Bowler
Try a journaling practice with The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad
A blessing for the makers
Blessed are you
who have been handed a life
you did not choose.
A diagnosis or disappointment.
Another heartbreak or onslaught.
You who know the ongoingness of pain
and how boring its sameness can become.
Here, creativity is not a luxury.
It’s a lifeline.
Like a rogue piece of found (wrapped) candy
under your minivan seat—
forgotten, sweet,
and somehow exactly
what you needed to survive
the next five minutes.
So blessed are you who pick up the pen,
the brush, the thread,
daring to create,
not because it fixes anything,
but because you believe
that what you make
might carry you.
Not toward healing, necessarily,
but toward becoming.
Becoming someone
with eyes to see beauty
among the ashes,
and good amid despair.
Becoming someone who finds
a tiny window of agency
and allows something new
to be born here, too.
Becoming a hope-maker
in a world where
Everything Happens.
