Pick your mode...
~ December calendar, mixed-media-mode
Out of time, outta-mode. Or outmoded?
December pretends to be a soft landing.
Calendar blocks look wide and generous, until every square fills with something that is not work, not thought, not rest; that mode …
Social-mode and shopping-mode steal the stage, while thinking-mode, working-mode, and working-out-mode wait in the hallway, tapping their feet. No wonder I feel outta modes.
Time is supposed to be neutral.
Clean grid, equal squares, equal hours.
December hardly feels neutral-mode at all.
The month of winding down for many is the month of catching up for many more. Parties here, concerts there, year-end fundraisers, gift exchanges, family obligations that are not really optional. The calendar fills early, then keeps leaking new obligations through every crack-mode.
At the same time, the 2026 planning machine is already humming. Outlook invites talk about next year’s metrics. Investment decks project what the next twelve months might bring. Strategic plans, budgets, and resolutions all compete for headspace, while 2025 still sits unfinished like an unopened parcel - still in the box mode …
That is when/where modes start to pile up.
Social-mode is on. Shopping-mode keeps whispering about deals, deliveries, and deadlines. Working mode wants one more serious push before people disappear into vacation mode.
Thinking-mode wants a quiet stretch to sort out what this year meant and what next year should be mode. Working-out mode is somewhere under a pile of laundry, wondering when it will be invited back.
Meanwhile, I drift into an outta-mode version of myself.
Too much, not enough, all at once.
The conundrum-mode, trying to focus on 2026 things while so much of 2025 is in not-done-mode.
Unfinished tasks of this year do not care that the planning cycle for next year has begun. They simply sit there, patient and heavy, waiting for their turn/turd mode.
So, modes multiply faster than hours.
Every yes to one mode is a quiet no to another.
The day is still the same size.
My energy is still finite. The illusion I can honour every mode at once is just that, an illusion-mode.
This is where choice becomes less about productivity and more about honesty. I can keep pretending that social-mode, shopping-mode, thinking-mode, working-mode, and working-out-mode all deserve equal treatment in the same week.
Or I can admit that, in December, some modes will win and some will be stuck in on-hold mode waiting.
Doing less is not surrender.
It is a form of editing.
Choosing one real focus for today, and one small step for tomorrow, is different from collapsing under a tangle of good-intention mode.
Letting this year finish imperfectly so next year can begin more clearly may be the most adult-mode use of time I have. Time does not care which mode I am in, so the only power I really have is to choose my mode on purpose.
Time does not expand, so sanity begins when I choose my mode and stop pretending I can live in all modes at once-mode.
Off-grid-mode/comode/small house mode:
