I think I am writing about this topic cause I like the headline I made up. I am certain I am not the first person to come up with this line, but oh well.
I know I have readers in other countries that may or may not have the kind of nuttiness that we do here in the states around the time of year, so again, I apologize if this newsletter isn’t relevant. (I had to apologize at the US Thanksgiving Holiday as well for my cynicism).
I am not just in a holi-daze. I am in an end-of-the-year-daze; a gigantic-creative-project-daze and an overcommitted-sleep-deprived-daze. I don’t mind being absorbed in a topic or even a few at a time, but puleeze…this may be too much.
So finally, I am going to get to a point, if I can find one here. Sometimes you have to slip out of holi-daze into survival phase. (Catchy, huh? I just made that up too.) Survival phase is where you take bouts of relief where you can find it. So here is my prescription for survival phase:
Creative Energizer Break:
You will manage holi-daze better if you:
- Lighten up and let go of perfectionism. “Done” trumps perfect every time.
- Nobody does it (whatever it is) better than you. Absolutely true, but do you really want to spend the second week in January sick in bed because you had to do everything yourself? Delegate, delegate, delegate. (Or bribe, wheedle, connive.)
- Throw money at it. I don’t have a lot of money to follow this advice, but if you do, it solves a lot of holi-daze issues. Paying someone to clean my house is worth a lot of stocking stuffers to me and it is definitely survival phase.
- You are a brilliant creative genius. Turn the power of your creativity into ways to take care of yourself. Find time alone, listen to beautiful music, watch sappy Christmas movies. Disappear for an hour if you can.
- Be gentle with yourself and your expectations. Why set yourself up for disappointment by making unrealistic demands on yourself and others who are also in holi-daze?
- There are only so many hours in the day of a holi-daze, but survival phase time stretches out a little longer because the unnecessary stuff falls by the wayside.
In my effort to live this holi-daze in survival phase, I am not going to re-write and agonize over this post so I am going to model survival phase and press save.