So here we are in December, I got a few Christmas lights up, and in this season it starts to feel like a runway into the new year.
So the year is wrapping up, and I love the Christmas season.
I love having this time to step out of the regular routine of the year and have a special time set aside, Christmas and New Year’s, completely stop all normal activities right around the time of Christmas and New Year’s, and get a complete reset.
Now, it’s not there yet.
For the next three weeks or so, right up until just before Christmas, it’s going to be full-on work, getting as much as I can out of this year, to put myself in a good position at the beginning of the new year.
It’s like that new year feeling in January, where you have a fresh year to work with: I love having that fresh start.
So I think about December as being this time to get myself to the starting point, get myself in as good a position as possible, then go into the Christmas/New Year’s break where just go into basic maintenance.
Just like I talked about a maintenance day every week or two or three, just taking care of things and renewing the foundations of regular work, well, Christmas and New Year’s is like the weekend of the year.
It’s like the maintenance day for the whole year.
So then I just go and clean up everything, organize, declutter, get everything into a nice, simple, strong foundation to then go into the new year and get going with a great start.
So that’s the attitude I have in December, and it’s a wonderful time of year.
I really like to celebrate the traditions of Christmas, spending time with the family.
It feels like coming home.
It’s like the year, the pattern of the year, is like you go out, New Year’s, a fresh start, you go out into the world, have new projects, new missions, new adventures, go out and have great adventure.
Usually it starts in the winter, so it’s just working inside, but it’s on a new project, feeling of a fresh start.
Going into the spring, having adventure, hopefully some travel, seeing new things, going out into the world.
The summer, when things are in full flower.
And then the fall feels sort of like a coming in, wrapping things up, coming back home, but still throughout the fall it’s strong work, do as much as can be done.
But then Christmastime is this time to just come home.
It’s almost like sleeping.
Just like we need to sleep at the end of the day, there’s a cycle of the year that is like the cycle of waking and sleeping, so that the spring is like the morning, summer midday, fall is the evening, and then the wintertime is the night.
Now, all these metaphors can be stretched too far, because we have to sleep for a third of the day, eight hours, but we’re not going to be sleeping for a third of the year.
We’re not going to be for sleeping four months.
There’s a lot of work being done.
So all this doesn’t line up perfectly.
But there is that kind of sense there’s that basic circular pattern of going out and coming in.
So just like the morning and the early part of the year is this going out, beginning something new, going into the world, and then the wintertime, the fall and winter, is this coming home.
So this is what I like to celebrate around this season in December.
So my plan for this month is to bring this year home as best I can.
Everything for the next three weeks up until Christmas will be working to get myself in the strongest position possible, then go into full maintenance mode, spend time with family, takes some time to completely break from the thoughts of work, get everything into an orderly state, and then it’s on to the New Year.
I don’t know why I like this so much.
There’s just something about it.
Does anybody have any idea what is it that is so powerful about this way of looking at the year and really celebrating the different seasons of the year?