Dead Week
Holidays are for hibernation
Welcome to 2024. Have you recovered from 2023 yet?
My apologies to each of you for taking two months off, but I fell into a deep hole over the holidays. I still feel buried, underneath a thick layer of feelings and pressures.
I tend to second guess my bodily instincts, but a wise friend reminded me that winter is for hibernation. Extra sleep is good. Slow is the speed. And this is our nature.
Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena, CA
I was also reminded that the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is better known as “dead week” where productivity-wise, nothing is expected and nothing is delivered. This year felt even more pronounced because the holidays fell on Mondays, and because I wasn’t traveling or officially taking vacation time.
Just hobbling along, half awake, half-hearted. Exhausted.
What was your experience? Did time slow for you too?
While I was mentally knee-deep in molasses, I avoided writing and avoided playing with art projects. I began to doubt my positive affirmations about money and wealth. I avoided any extra effort at work. I sought only comfort and coddling.
Instead, I cracked open a new book (Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss). I slept in, napped, and went to bed early. I played with a new set of tarot cards. I started and am now nearly finished with the entire Harry Potter film series—after having watched Home Alone 1, 2, and 3, my other favorite holiday movie franchise.
I upgraded my surroundings with a new plant, a powerful Vornado space heater, an ionic aromatherapy diffuser, and a few new pieces of art. I purged my hall closet, which had been my token junk receptacle—stuffed with towels, sheets, reusable bags, and other miscellany.
Harry Potter <3
I added a chic striped velvet bolster pillow to my hallway bench. It’s the minor touches that make holiday nesting fun, in my opinion.
I traded letters with some of my distant family and friends, an impulse that always seems to percolate during the holidays. I even attended a few holiday gatherings, donning my new purple tracksuit.
Looking back, I was more active than I realized. I was creating that special magic of tending to one’s own space, giving into flow states. And none of it was visible from the outside. I wasn’t documenting any of it on Instagram for all to see.
Hopefully you also enjoyed some nesting—it being the best way to truly achieve recovery and reset in my opinion.
Throughout all of this hibernating and self-soothing, I also experienced several moments of pure panic. It was an insistent alarm, about being so lazy and slow and overindulgent and (seemingly) unproductive. Panic like OMG everything is falling apart and panic like, will this slow phase ever end?
Panic about forward momentum. I was avoiding the hard stuff—shadow work, job applications, other side hustle tasks—while choosing to focus on my bliss and on fun. And then feeling guilty about it.
Temescal Canyon hike, Pacific Palisades
Perhaps this is the classic struggle of the busybody. Competing internal voices were debating each other and jockeying for top position in my brain. One voice was telling me to get off my lazy ass and WORK, while another voice coaxed me into lethargy.
I think deep down I just wanted the noise and the cacophony of content to stop. I felt—and still feel—so weary of the endless wells of entertainment, self-improvement, and advice that circulates online.
Faintly, I could hear another voice whispering perhaps my deepest urges to run away, to live in the forest, cut off from humanity but in direct contact with nature. For stillness, for quiet. For peace.
It occurred to me that this mixed bag of feelings I experienced during dead week and into January is a product of our society’s obsession with productivity, with grinding. We hardly give ourselves time to rest, reflect, and acknowledge our hard work and expansion over the past year, only to rush right into the new one.
I for one deeply appreciated the time and space to withdraw. To truly recuperate and reset myself for another busy year of growth and goals.
I hope, with love and affection, that you too were able to enjoy the many positives of dead week and of a slow, contemplative wintry hibernation.
Here’s to an even richer 2024! I have a lot of fun stuff to share with you, soon.
FLOW magazine sums it up well
Glad you've had time to rest and nest ❤️