This is that weird week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve/Day, where no one knows what day it is and how much work they should be doing. Even I, a self-employed artist, never know what to do with myself during this week.
Well, I used to take the week off and start fresh when the new year arrived, but now that I’ve stopped doing that in favor of regularly-scheduled breaks I find myself having to decide how productive I need to be. I have decided to work through this week, a decision I will come to either appreciate or regret.
On the one hand, I used to love my year-end holiday break. Sometimes it lasted over a week, and that opportunity to recharge and start fresh in the new year always had me feeling great when I returned to work. But it also meant I was working steadily throughout the rest of the year without any significant refreshers, and that had me courting burnout as the years wore on.
On the other hand, I love my regularly-scheduled week-long breaks between chapters for all the reasons listed above. The chance to “stretch my muscles” between scheduled updates has been a real blessing and kept my relationship with creative output healthier than it’s been in years. Granted, I’m not sitting around doing absolutely nothing during those breaks like I would during my holiday break, as I need to continue producing comics ahead-of-time for my Patreon patrons, but that week still sees relaxed productivity. I do miss sitting around doing absolutely nothing for over a week, though.
This weird, nebulous week is a creature all its own, though. I almost forgot that I needed to post a comic page yesterday and write a blog post for today. I sat down to work on some lingering commissions from the holiday sale and briefly forgot what day it was. With my son off from school and my wife off work most of the week I have no way to time out the pace of my work week. Part of me feels compelled to take this week off as an extra break every year because it’s so confusing.
On the other hand, there are lots of folks who have to work during this week in order to give the folks who have off something fun to do, and I feel like contributing comic updates is my way of becoming part of folks’ vacation week. So while I may be distracted and discombobulated, I feel good knowing that keeping my little corner of the internet active during the holidays may be helping someone enjoy theirs a little more.