29 Things You Don’t Have to Do This Year End
A chickadee on an outstretched hand, eating seeds.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year and I know we’re all about to be inundated with the idea that we need to somehow (literally and metaphorically) put a pretty bow on it all to “end the year strong".
I’ve written before about why the fall and winter season is so therapeutic for me. The weather is nicer. Certain parts of life are beginning to wind down or become dormant for awhile. And recently, I realized a huge benefit to this time of year:
We’re all tired.
Yep, being tired is a benefit.
Being deeply and utterly exhausted is a benefit, too — because that visceral sense of weariness from a busy year also makes it damn near impossible to hang the hell on to our best intentions.
And for the love of Keanu, I’m so grateful for that.
I’m glad I can’t do the stuff I want to do, because doing those things would ultimately be bad for me.
When is a good intention bad for you? When it starts to hurt you. When it starts to add unneeded pressure, strain, or frustration, and when the result isn’t worth it.
And so many of the pressures to perform “year end” tasks?
They ain’t worth it.
Despite the pressure to “make the most” of the last month of the year, it’s quite likely that your body, mind, and creative spirit are asking for something entirely different.
Logically, you may want to Do All The Things.
You may want to wrap up the year on a high note. You might want to start thinking of your yearly intentions, resolutions, or fine tune your projects to squeeze the most amount of creative juice out of yourself so you can make 2023 the most… something year ever.
There is so much pressure on each of us to turn every rough day, week, or year into something positive or useful. Something to make sense of it all.
You might really want to do that right now— to make the events of this year into something your creative spirit can feel happy about. (Or that your brain can feel okay with.)
But want and need are entirely different things.
And your creative spirit is fluent in every language. Even the language of the tough things we consciously don’t want to linger on.
So what do you need this December?
If you’re emotionally, physically, or mentally exhausted, chances are you need to drop the unnecessary pressure and take in the year end your way.
The ___(insert your name here)____ Way.
What does that look like for you?
To that end, here’s an incomplete list of things you don’t need to do, even though you might feel a ton of social coercion to want to do them right now.
Feel free to steal, adapt, share or ignore them!
This Year End, You Don’t Have To:
End the year of a ‘high note’.
‘Make the most’ of the last 34, 33, 32… days left of the year.
Maintain the perfectly decorated Hallmark home of holiday magic.
Do a bunch of family shit that you know is emotionally awful for you.
“End the year strong!”
Bake the homemade cookies for your kids class. Or anyone.
Create the enviable Top 9 Instagram-photo-grid thing that circulates around.
Make sense of your business or job.
“Figure out your next direction” for your creativity/job/life.
Devise a brilliant, colour-coded “2024 will be better!” habit plan.
Buy ten self help books to “get yourself sorted”.
Feel bad about your life because Someone Sparkly Online posted a thing that is 100% not a completely accurate view of their life.
Solve your family problems in time for the big holiday dinner.
Design a new workflow for 2024.
Make another person’s bad planning your year end emergency.
Lose ten pounds “before the New Year”.
Start a gratitude practice so you can start next year without that stick up your butt.2
Singlehandedly solve truly nuanced issues of the global arena.
Make those rough weeks/months make sense.
“Be in the moment” every moment. (Escapism is survival sometimes.)
Host the thing that brings all the people into your house. You can be the hostess with the not-mostest. Or not a hostess at all.
For my entrepreneurs, you don’t need to figure out the economy-sales-email intersection right now. Stuff is weird. We can let it be weird.
Have the perfect “year end” glow up. Humans aren’t great at bioluminescence.
Listen to the popular playlists of the season.
Craft the all-encompassing “year in review” for yourself.
Plan your 2024. At all. In any way.
Prove you had a ‘great year’ — online or otherwise.
Prove anything, actually.
Be able to convey what you know about yourself now, that you didn’t know a year ago.
…What would you add? (Tell me below!)
One of my favourite things to do this time of year is train my backyard birds to eat from my hand. (Really, they’re training me that they can get free food on demand if they just show up!)
I’m proud of a lot of things in my life, but one of the things that means the most to me is that animals trust me. It feels like a huge win every single time they go about their lives while I’m in their vicinity.
If you've ever hand fed a tiny chickadee or jaunty blue jay before, you know how awe-inspiring it is to see those wire-thin bird claws wrap around your finger. They’re unbelievably delicate, and there’s a whole universe behind those eyes that we’ll never know.
But did you know that many bird claws naturally and automatically in a closed position when they land on a branch?
So, when they’re flying or not weight bearing, their tiny claws are open. And when they land, the weight of their wee bodies makes their claws close immediately. It’s a built-in adaptation, so they don’t have to expend more energy to perch.
It gets me thinking:
So many of us are like these birds, tightening our grip when life feels heavier. Often, we can train ourselves to never loosen our grip — no matter how exhausted we are.
But we aren’t birds.
We don’t have a built-in mechanism to relax our grip and tighten our grip in the appropriate instances.
Instead, we’ve got to help ourselves let go.
When you’re exhausted is one of the best times to practice loosening that grip.
It’s not a failure to give into what you feel you need — even if that means not doing the things.
In fact, it’s a privilege.
I hope our column this week helps you a little bit in doing so — even if it’s just in giving yourself permission to dial down your “end the year strong!” energy to something that feels better for you.
What do you really need right now?