The benefits of the holiday break
Take some time to unplug and recharge as the year comes to an end
It's that time of year again. It's the holiday season as well as the close of another calendar year.
No matter what you're doing to celebrate this season, you likely need to take some time to rest over the coming weeks. And the beauty of that statement is that rest looks totally different for everyone.
For some people this may just mean a few days without checking their email. That seems pretty reasonable to me. Others may enjoy a self-imposed social media break. And I know that some people take this even further and properly remove all screens from their lives over the holidays.
It's less about how restrictive you want to get and it's more about being conscious of your screen time as we head into a new year.
And I'll be the first to admit how hard this can be. Writing everyday has become so engrained into my routine, that I can't really imagine taking a complete break from computer use. But I do think that it's wise to change up the way in which I use my technology over the holiday break.
With that said, I plan to take a little time off from email updates and Substack posts. This will give me a chance to pause and reflect on some upcoming changes to this publication. As I've mentioned before, there will be more content behind the paid subscription wall in the new year and I need a little time to sort that out.
Not to worry, there will be plenty of content for free subscribers but the time has come to level things up for the folks who have been reading for a long time and pledged monetarily to support my work. There will be more updates on this front in January.
My birthday falls exactly halfway through the calendar year. So I typically take that time at the end of June/early July to assess my year thus far. It's the perfect time for the "mid-year resolution" as I like to call it.
And it lines up perfectly with the last week of December/early January to consider those typical new year resolutions six months later.
I think that new year resolutions really get a bad rap. They've become a gimmick and people get discouraged with all the data about resolutions failing before February. But are they really a failure if they caused you to pause and reconsider your daily routines? Even if you return to the previous status quo, a short stint of trying something new must be good for us in one way or another right?
So the holiday break gives us all a time to think about what we may like to test out in the new year. It doesn't always have to be something big. It doesn't have to be something that impacts our health or wellness or makes us feel superior to our past selves of last year. It can be something silly, something easy, something decadent even.
I guess the point I'm attempting to make here is that we shouldn't just float through the next two weeks of the year with the same set of principles that guided the previous fifty weeks of the year. Let's give this span the reverence it deserves. That can be stereotypical "holiday stuff" or it can be whatever you make of it.
I'm excited to spend some dedicated time with immediate family over the holidays but don't feel the need to travel a ton and move too fast. I think the holidays are an important time to contemplate as much as they are to celebrate. Personally, I feel that a well-rounded holiday break involves equal amounts of both.
However you choose to spend your holidays, I hope you get out of them what you need. Maybe that is a bit of calm and disconnection. Or it could be that you want to tackle a big end of the year project that requires some uninterrupted work that can only be accomplished in this typically quiet period. Good luck with whatever you choose!
The new year will bring plenty of excitement and worthwhile updates to share in this space. And I'm sure I'll have some new tech reviews and retro gear nostalgia that bubbles up around the holiday season. There also may be some new EV and mobility content coming in January as I've been testing out some new transportation solutions for 2025
Thanks as always for reading, and happy holidays!
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