Francesca's Thoughts

1. Go through your messages. Reply to the big emails.
2. Realise the big emails require planner cross-checks and WhatsApp messages. Send the messages.
3. Send the emails.
4. Clear your inbox of anything of medium importance.
5. Realise that the low importance emails never mattered and delete them. Resolve to do this more after the holiday.
6. Turn on your out-of-office automatic email replies on however many inboxes you monitor. Include useful links in the accounts to which people will have emailed questions because they actively chose not to Google their question, and thought instead that emailing you on Christmas Eve was a smarter, faster and more empathic option.
7. Consult your to-do list. If it includes basic accounting, updating your planner for the new year to reduce first day back stress and/or more messages, make a cup of tea.
8. Find new emails in your inbox. Everyone you work with is doing step one. Don’t reply, because your out of office is activated and you are, officially, No Longer Available. Do you even exist? Possibly not.
9. Check that anything you needed to schedule over the break has been scheduled. (Are you really going to Instagram a sunrise photo for the solstice on the day you observe it? Probably, yeah. If you don’t, it’s okay to spend 10 days with no Instagram updates, even if you are publishing a book and require Content. Most people who follow your work will be very drunk very soon, and won’t be able to read captions anyway.)
10. Finish up any last dregs that will annoy you after the break if they’re still hanging around waiting to be done.
11. There was something Big you wanted to get done before the break. There always is. It can wait until after the break. It’s waited three months or three weeks and it can wait ten more days. If you come back rested, you might actually get it done more efficiently after your break.
12. Remember you wanted to write a blog post before the break, but the one you have drafted might work better in the new year and you’ve lost interest anyway.
13. Write this blog post.
14. Fuck off.

Have a lovely and safe whatever-you’re-celebrating and I will see you in 2024!

Look after yourselves,
Francesca

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to read my short stories and see behind-the-scenes work, you can sample? the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon for a month with this link. No pressure to stick around! Think of it as trying a miniature dessert with no requirement to eat the whole menu. You can also find me on Ko-fi. Thank you for your support – you’re helping to fund this space and pay for other costs of running a creative business, like paying editors.

Here are the books I’ve published so far and where you can find them. If you enjoy my book recommendations, browse my Bookshop.org page here.

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