How Can We Live in the In Between?

Why the Days Between Christmas and New Year Matter More Than We Think.

This week has a strange reputation. The days between Christmas and New Year’s are often treated like a throwaway stretch of time, a blur of leftovers and low expectations. Work slows down. Emails feel optional. The calendar itself seems unsure what to ask of us. It’s tempting to treat these days as something to endure until real life starts again.

But I’ve come to think this week isn’t empty at all; it’s a threshold.

The old year has already loosened its grip. The rituals are finished. The obligations have largely been met. But the new year hasn’t arrived yet, with its resolutions and demands and fresh sense of urgency. We’re standing in a doorway, and doorways are uncomfortable places to linger. They don’t give us clear instructions. They don’t let us fully settle. So we rush through them.

Modern life doesn’t make much room for the in between. We’re taught to move from one thing to the next as efficiently as possible. Finish the task. Close the chapter. Set the goal. Start again. Anything that doesn’t clearly belong to “before” or “after” feels like wasted time, but most meaningful change doesn’t happen at the moments we label as important. It happens in the quieter spaces, the pauses, the places where nothing is being demanded yet.

This week is one of those rare pauses.

I notice it in myself every year. There’s a subtle loosening. I’m less interested in performing competence, less inclined to prove momentum. I start noticing what I’m relieved to put down. I also notice what I miss when the noise dies down. Those are not trivial observations; they’re clues.

As a writer, I’ve learned that the in between is where the real work happens, not during the drafting frenzy or when the piece is finished and I’m sending it out into the world. The real work takes shape in the spaces between projects, when you’re no longer inside the old voice, but you haven’t found the new one either, when you don’t quite know what you’re writing toward, only that something is shifting in the back of your mind.

Revision lives there. Discernment lives there. So does doubt. And patience. You can’t rush that stage without flattening the work. The same is true of a life. During this week, our lives don’t need to be optimized. They don’t need a productivity plan or a vision board. We don’t need to reinvent ourselves. We just need to take inventory.

What carried you this year that no longer fits? What did you keep doing out of habit rather than conviction? What surprised you? What quietly sustained you when no one was watching?

Those questions don’t require immediate answers. In fact, they’re often spoiled by premature certainty. It’s enough to sit with them, to let them hover, to notice what rises uninvited when things slow down.

The mistake is thinking the in between is a problem to solve rather than a space to inhabit. We’ll have plenty of time soon for plans and resolutions and forward motion; the new year is very good at making itself known. It will arrive with its lists and expectations whether we’re ready or not.

But this week is different. It belongs to no one. It’s a small, unguarded stretch of time where you’re allowed to be unfinished. If you can resist the urge to rush past it, you might find that the in between isn’t empty at all. It’s where you recalibrate. It’s where you listen. It’s where the next thing quietly begins to take shape.

For now, it’s enough to stand in the doorway and pay attention.