I Dare You to Chill

I’m “off” for basically the next two weeks.

It’s not technically vacation in my mind. I’ll poke around with some end of the year stuff. (wrapping up accounting, inventory, sending a book to the printer, and probably some light email marketing.)

If the first half of December was “light work” than the rest of December is “very light work.”

• I’ll probably buy a fiction book or two for Kindle and disappear to a coffee shop at some point.
• I’m going to re-engage lobster fishing.
• I’ll go kayaking out on Mission Bay a bit.
• There are basketball games to go to and the Poinsettia Bowl to attend tomorrow night.
• We’re taking the kids to the zoo, thinking about a day trip to LA.

Basically, I’m not doing much.

It’s a rest period. It’s simple. And it’s intentional.

This little window of time has been on my calendar for all of 2014. I’ve been looking forward to it. All year long when people say “you are busy” I reply “yeah, but I basically take December off.”

So this is it. And I’m doing it.

Seasons

For so long, all of my 20s and most of my 30s, I’ve been afraid of a “working chill period.” Some of it was insecurity. Some of it was a fear that I’d miss something important. Some of it was being threatened that if I didn’t work 50 hours per week or more that I’d be fired. (Uh, even in churches this is illegal. But it’s rampant.) And some of it was simply that I really and truly loved my work and wanted to do more… I’ve always been ambitious.

A few years ago I got introduced to the concept of seasons. This way of thinking really helps me. I’ve got high seasons where I work a ton, travel a ton, and just go from thing to thing. And I’ve got low seasons where I don’t travel much, less has to get done, and I lean into healthy rhythms of work, play, and reconnection.

June and July? Low season. Mid-September through Mid-November? High season. December? Super low season. January – March? Normal time.

I Dare You to Chill

The point of all of this wasn’t to overshare or somehow brag that this is a super low period of work for me.

The point is that the next two weeks set themselves up perfectly to chill.

Christmas is on Thursday. That means nothing will happen most of Wednesday. Thursday. Or Friday. Then it’s the weekend so nothing will happen. That’s four days of built in “chill” if only you’ll take it.

And it repeats next week. New Years Eve, nothing happens after about 12:00 PM. Thursday is an off day. No one does anything on Friday. The weekend.

Literally, that means there are 4 work days in the next two weeks for most people.

Take them.

Chill.

Postscript for Church Staff – I’m sorry this isn’t a chill period for you. I don’t know how Christmas and Easter got painted as “outreach opportunities.” That thought just doesn’t seem logical to me. High attendance doesn’t equal high return rate, but somewhere someone does. I just want to encourage you to truly shut it down when you can.