Christmas, New Year, and the Space Between

There's a specific quality to late December that doesn't exist anywhere else in the year. The world doesn't stop, exactly, but it slows. Emails taper off. Projects enter a holding pattern. The usual urgency dissolves into something quieter.

I've always found this unsettling. Not in a bad way—just in the sense that when the structure drops away, you notice what was holding you up and what was just momentum.

The Break in Routine

Most of the year, I operate on autopilot. Morning coffee, check messages, start working. The rhythm carries me. I don't question it because it works.

Then December hits, and the rhythm breaks. People take time off. Deadlines shift. The infrastructure of productivity pauses, and suddenly you're left with: what do I actually want to be doing right now?

It's clarifying. Some things I thought mattered turn out to be habits I was performing for their own sake. Other things I'd been putting off—reading, writing, building something without a deadline—suddenly feel more urgent than anything on the calendar.

I'm not sure if this is rest or recalibration. Maybe both.

Letting Go, Carrying Forward

I don't do resolutions in the traditional sense. The idea of starting fresh on January 1st feels arbitrary—like the calendar can override inertia. It can't.

But I do use this time to take inventory. What worked this year? What didn't? What patterns am I repeating without realizing it?

What I'm letting go of:

• The assumption that constant output equals progress. Some of my best work came from long stretches of apparent inactivity—reading, thinking, letting ideas settle.
• The impulse to optimize everything. Not every system needs refinement. Some things work well enough, and the time spent improving them could go elsewhere.
• The belief that I need to have strong opinions on everything. It's okay to observe without concluding.

What I'm carrying forward:

• Writing more. Not for an audience (though that's fine if it happens), but as a tool for thinking. The act of putting ideas into sentences clarifies them in ways nothing else does.
• Building in public. Sharing work-in-progress, half-formed thoughts, experiments that might not go anywhere. The feedback loop is valuable, but so is the practice of not waiting for perfection.
• Staying selective about commitments. Every yes is a no to something else. I want to be more deliberate about where attention goes.

A Simple Practice for January

I'm not starting the year with ambitious goals or detailed plans. Instead, I'm starting with a question: what's the smallest thing I can do today that moves me toward where I want to be?

Not a system. Not a habit stack. Just one small, concrete action per day. Write 200 words. Read 10 pages. Ship one small feature. The specifics matter less than the consistency.

The goal isn't transformation. It's just showing up, repeatedly, and trusting that the direction becomes clearer as you move.

What This Time Teaches

The space between Christmas and New Year feels like a threshold. Not quite the old year, not quite the new one. A suspended moment where you can see both what you're leaving behind and what's ahead.

I think the lesson is this: change doesn't require a dramatic reset. It requires attention. Noticing what's working and what isn't. Adjusting course slightly, repeatedly, until the cumulative effect becomes visible.

The year doesn't change you. You change you. The calendar just gives you an excuse to notice.

So here's to the quiet days. The stillness. The space to think without the pressure to produce. And to whatever comes next, one small step at a time.