Our coffee maker is broken. She’s 11 years old and wasn’t meant to sold at Retail. The pot is an OXO prototype, feedback exchanged for this new model. In December, as I went under the knife, she started brewing hot air if left plugged in. The coffee pot is now louder and hotter than any other brew cycle we’ve seen.

We are currently taking 7,429 steps to work around the malfunctioning coffee maker instead of buying a new one. We are living in the land of inefficient coffee inducing countless off kilter mornings

It’s one of my joys, the early and only coffee greeting me before I see it, set by an alarm the Oxo engineers thoughtfully added. For the last month, it’s missing—this premeditated coffee brew. My nervous system hates the lack of ritual.

In the elongated waiting for my cup of joe, I’m reminded of the “&” that has inspired the last several years of my life. The 24 Oracle Deck was predicted on the idea that opposing energies are often softened when we move toward the & (and) of our internal dialogue.

Traditionally, December is overflowing with hiccups due to our overflowing calendars and deadlines. This year, following tailbone surgery, this December dip is l a cut not just a scrape. I crave the next moment of feeling well. I seek new dopamine hits, god knows it’s not coming from my strange coffee maker. Waiting for the coffee is a test on my back pain and my mind.

Here’s what I know.

Practically, I’m living between an old and new coffee machine every morning. Energetically I’m forced to accept the grey of life riding outside of the lines, between spaces, people, days, moments, visitors, parties, school is hard when it’s all at once.

If December was the filabuster of 2024, Is this week after Christmas and before New Year’s Day a liminal time warp?

Liminal is a silky word, popping into my inbox and conversations more and more. I’m wary. It’s feeling like a trend, much like the authenticity tone that popped up twenty years ago. Being defined as the in between of phases, it lacks well tuned synonyms; Subtle, minimal, adjacent, peripheral (or my personal favorite)marginal.

Is the week before New Year’s a liminal void of structure that paralyzes us? Someone dubbed this week the “dead week’ of nothingness but snacking. To me, it’s life with big crescendos and dips of reality. As we all rebuild our systems for a new calendar year, it is the subtleness of quiet that yanks on my mind to figure things out. Subliminal takes this further to mean what is so subtle we cannot even see it on the horizon.

Perhaps my entire body and calendar need this time after my surgery, strange work year and holiday jamboree. Most of the year, we live on each other’s terms. This week is mine; this year in particular was my body’s December.

If I continue to measure where I’m heading instead of where I am, I’ll be racing towards death.

Rather than worry about a week of structureless moments, I’m returning to the basics and moving into the year of &.

A few realizations of letting go of naming something that doesn’t need a name. I’m using it to get back to what is real life.

• Forward & backward

• Suffering & laughter

• Friends & no-longer friends due to energy vampiring

• Releasing & calling in

• Detachment & claiming

• Play that is work & Work that is play

• New & classics

• Fun & powering through

I’ll leave you to noodle on your own grey zones.

Lynn Mull Holistic Career Coach & Author

Career Coach | Author | WellNess Advisor | Reiki Master
I offer Clarity through Reiki healing sessions, and Holistic Career Coaching and Facilitating Teams to professional wellness. I use various tools and methods to speak, write, and provide 1.1 counsel to move out of the stuck into the actions that help you or your teams reach their goals.I found my way because I had to create it.
As a working parent and a sandwich caregiver in my early 30s, I understand the pressures to keep going, provide for my family and prioritize everyone else’s wellbeing.

I looked in many corners and could not find one coach to break into my inner blockages and move my career until Reiki and a Career Coach got me there. We can be all the things to everyone, but first, we must get aligned and intuitively move forward for our own .