The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a dud of a week. Between eating, drinking, days off to celebrate, the year coming to an end, and work spirits on half mast, it makes for a good pregnant pause, a sort of mini hibernation while collecting our energy for a new start.
It feels good to not do much of anything, pausing my usual high energy doingness and busyness, and sliding into that in between space before we start again. This is a transition week between the old and the new, stale and fresh, cynicism and hope, lethargy and inspiration.
Once the new year starts, I usually can’t wait to put the Christmas decorations away, ready for a fresh outlook, new opportunities and ideas, leaving the old behind, a chance to reinvent myself a bit even though the traditional new year resolutions usually don’t stick as research has shown (here a previous post on that).
If time stretched forever in an endless stream, without our stellar calendar subdivisions derived from the repetitive revolutions around our own axis, recurring trips around the sun, all while the moon spins around us, we might flounder at the sheer endlessness of time.
And so we need the ebbs and flows between ends and beginnings, between high mental and physical activity and a slowed pace. This buffer week before the new year, before our life starts again with renewed vigor, is a good time for some pensiveness and rest, a time to pause and regroup. This in between week is a time to slowly let go of this most unsettling of years so we can begin the new year with hope, imagination, creativity, inspiration, and energy.
Wishing you renewed optimism and courage, inner peace and inspiration for 2021!