How I’m spending Dead Week

The end times fun between Christmas and New Year's Eve

my year-end stack of diaries

Hey y’all,

For years, I have dreaded the weird no man’s land between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Because I set my own hours around here, I never know what I should be doing. Should I be working? Should I rest? Should I do both?

I was delighted when Meg sent me

Helena Fitzgerald

’s recent piece, “All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year.” Finally, a term I can use. “Dead Week!” 

Fitzgerald says instead of dreading Dead Week, she looks forward to it all year long. She frames Dead Week as a “nothing time” in which nobody really expects that much of you and nothing you do matters that much.

Dead Week… is a week off from the forward-motion drive of the rest of the year. It is a time against ambition and against striving. Whatever we hoped to finish is either finished or it’s not going to happen this week, and all our successes and failures from the previous year are already tallied up. It’s too late for everything; Dead Week is the luxurious relief of giving up.

What I’m doing with Dead Week is not giving up, but letting go of the year.

Dead Week for me this year is one of pausing (even though, uh, I’m still writing this newsletter, I guess), looking back, and relaxing.

Here are three things I plan on doing…