How Do You Fall in Love with the In-Between?
Still trying to embrace the weirdest week of the year
Miry’s List Update: Now that all the final donations have trickled in and all the donations have processed, I can announce that we raised a stunning $22,916 for urgent needs & big ticket items for recently arrived refugee families. That’s $20,913 from Venmo, $1503 from Paypal, and $500 of my personal match. I’ve posted all receipts here, and if something doesn’t make sense or add up, email me! I’m grateful you’ve all trusted me with this sort of collection, and I never want there to be *any* cause for suspicion.
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Christmas and New Year’s are two of the only holidays still widely observed in the United States. Meaning: the vast majority of non-emergency services are off. I’ve alway found it interesting, or clever, or annoying, the way these two holidays were placed an exact week apart: not enough time to really get back in the swing of anything, particularly if you factor in any sort of holiday travel. It’s almost as if it were purposefully arranged to discourage productivity! It’s almost as if this time of year, when the light is limited and the outdoors are often hostile, was meant to be conducive to something else!
Holidays are essentially routine-exploders, no matter where they fall in the week; this year, the crater is even more expansive than usual. That’s particularly true in a year like this one, when both holidays (which are both, in truth, two-day events, even if the calendar only officially declares one) fall in the center of the week.
Whether you’re a devout Christian or have never celebrated Christmas, if you attend a sprawling multi-day family gathering or hole up at home, if you work in an office or remotely or don’t work for pay, we can agree that the rhythm of everyday life as a whole changes for this week in a way it simply does not any other time of year.
People call it Dead Week, In-Between Week, “the Holidays,” whatever — it’s a time of extended liminality.
And that, I’ve come to understand, is what throws me — things just don’t work the way they usually do. Or: I feel odd maintaining some of my routines against this other backdrop. And so, every year, I spend this extended week itching against the unknowability. I’ve tried so many different strategies over the years: just full-bore working (not great), sinking into nothingness (lethargy, and not the good kind), leaving entirely (moderately successful but expensive), jam-packing with planned activities (exhausting).
No plan really fits, because no plan’s meant to. It’s infinite and lumpy, unconducive to your attempts to wrangle it. You’re not supposed to do, you’re just supposed to be. Be with your loved ones or just with yourself and your space. Even if you have to show up at work during this time, there’s no forward movement. You’re there with your coworkers in a different sort of togetherness: as necessary bodies.
If you observe a sabbath, this feeling is not unfamiliar. You are well-acquainted with what others think of as the awkward restraints of just being. You understand its essential, restorative purpose — and marvel at others’ allergy to it. Why are we so terrified of stillness? To be still is an invitation to reckon with our smallness, our powerlessness, “Be still and know I am God,” etc. etc. We’d rather suffocate ourselves with action than take a deep breathe of existential wonder.
I’ve learned to stop working all the time, but as is so common, I often substitute one addiction with another. I don’t work, but I fill my days with other plans, hungry for some sense of accomplishment and completion. Even resting is readily transformed into a to-do list of self-care of four-hour everything showers. So what about stopping? Stop planning for the day or month or year to come, stop organizing, stop scheduling, stop cleaning the kitchen, stop exercising, stop mediating others’ conversations, stop baking, stop entertaining, stop worrying, stop starting. Just finish the exhale of the year and hang out there for a bit.
With the various expectations we load on top of this time of year — particularly when it comes to family, and entertaining, and performance of the self — is that even possible? Is there a way to stop that doesn’t create lethargy? Is that just a Very Me attitude problem? How does ritual fit into all of this? Do I actually want to try stopping, or do I just want this week to be less heavy with unspoken demands after a long year of handling spoken ones?
When I began writing this piece, I wanted to tee up an ask for how you arrange this liminal time: your tips and tricks, your hacks and mantras. But I think, processing my own difficulties for the umpeenth year, what I really want to think about is how you’ve learned (or struggled, like me!) to fall in love with a week not just of slowness, but something even slower than slow, something more like stopping. What have you shifted internally and externally? What conversations do you have with yourselves and others? If we don’t make plans, can we make hopes? How can you obtain the feeling of stopping while also (gently) doing things?
You can take this in whatever direction you want — veering as much as possible towards self-reflection and away from THIS ONE COOL TRICK WILL SOLVE YOUR ISSUES WITH LIMINALITY. And if this time of year is awesome for you and always has been: cool, try and spend some time thinking about why it’s difficult, for so many intersecting reasons, for others.
And finally: You don’t have to focus specifically on this particular time of year. The architecture of the calendar makes this week & its liminality easy to think about for a lot of people — but depending where you live and the rhythms of your life, *your* in-between week might be very different.