(The low hum of a space heater, the clink of a spoon against a ceramic mug. A long, contemplative silence.)

Hey. It’s me.

So. The lights are up on the houses. The weird, inflatable yard decorations are either charming or vaguely threatening, depending on the street. There’s a pervasive smell of cinnamon and pine needles and, underneath it all, just a little bit of panic.

And I’m looking at my to-do list. The one I wrote in September. The projects that were gonna be “done by the holidays.” The half-finished manuscript on my desk looks less like a future book and more like a crime scene made of Post-its. The guitar in the corner has a layer of dust you could write your name in. My palette knives are all stuck together in a solid, abstract block of dried Payne’s Grey.

And for a second, the old tape starts playing. You know the one. The one that says, “You should be working. Everyone else is working. That person online just released their thing, why haven’t you released your thing? You’re wasting time. You’re falling behind. The battery is dead and you forgot where you put the charger.”

I almost listened to it. I almost opened the laptop, powered through the fog, and tried to force something creative to happen. It would have been bad. It would have been bitter and tight and sounded like the creative equivalent of chewing on tinfoil.

Then I remembered something. A thing we all forget, especially the ones of us who tie our entire sense of worth to the making of things.

It’s okay to stop.

No, really. Hear me out. The world isn’t going to collapse if you take a breath. The muse, that fickle jerk, isn’t going to find a new, more productive host if you dare to watch a dumb movie. She’s probably on vacation herself, somewhere warm, drinking something with an umbrella in it.

So this is my wish for you. For all of you scribbling in notebooks, hovering over canvases, staring at code, humming melodies into your phone, stitching, shaping, building, writing… I wish you a wonderfully, unapologetically unproductive holiday season.

I wish you the courage to leave the studio messy. To let the brushes sit in the turpentine until January. To close the document without saving a new version. To let the clay dry out on the wheel. To look at the half-knit sweater and say, “You’ll be there in the new year.”

I wish you the profound, radical experience of boredom. The kind that doesn’t come from scrolling, but from staring out a window at bare branches. The kind where your brain, deprived of its usual “input,” starts to make its own connections again. That’s where the good stuff simmers. In the quiet. In the blank space.

I wish you time that is pointless. A long walk with no podcast in your ears. A board game where you laugh so hard you forget who’s winning. Cooking a meal that takes three hours and is eaten in ten minutes. Re-reading a book you love for no reason other than you love it. This isn’t wasting time. This is re-sourcing. You are gathering raw material for your soul. You are filling the well that you spend the rest of the year drawing from.

The work will be there. The blank page, the empty stage, the silent studio… they’re patient. They’re not going anywhere. They’ll be right where you left them, waiting.

But you won’t be the same you when you return. You’ll be a you who has slept. A you who has laughed with people you love, or enjoyed your own quiet company. A you who has, for a few blessed days, remembered that you are a human being, not a human doing.

Your creative battery isn’t dead. It’s just drained from powering the constant output. Plug it into something else for a while. Plug it into life. Into rest. Into something that doesn’t ask anything of you.

So go on. Be delightfully, defiantly lazy. Recharge in the way that only you know how. The world has enough forced, frantic creation right now. What it needs, and what you need, is for you to come back rested. Curious. Soft around the edges again.

Have a wonderful holiday. However you spend it, or don’t spend it. Just… take the break. You’ve earned it. I’ve earned it. We all have.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see if I can remember how to do nothing at all. I’ll report back.

(A soft click. The space heater hums on alone.)