Elf magic, cookie mishaps & the flurry of December
Messy Middle Dispatch 004
This isn’t about chasing virality or pretending to have all the answers. The Content Brief is where we explore the messy and meaningful both/and of work and life—with practical tools, real stories and curiosity as our guide. I’m Christin, and I believe clarity comes from the contradictions we name and the stories we tell.
*
December always arrives carrying two things at once.
The anticipation of Christmas — and a flurried haze that seems to settle over everything.
The days feel fast and full. The nights feel short. The calendar crowds in, and somehow the heart stretches wider anyway. This month hasn’t been serene or orderly. It’s been alive.
Here’s what December has held so far:
🎄 Sent the kids to Grandma’s for a weekend and worked a surprising amount of elf magic in the quiet.
🕊️ Said goodbye to a longtime mentor and dear friend, who lived a full 97 years — a reminder that legacy is often built slowly and faithfully.
🛍️ Volunteered at a holiday shopping spree where kids picked out gifts for themselves — their joy was impossible to miss.
🍪 Baked cookies and tossed an entire batch after a series of unfortunate mishaps. Humbling and oddly freeing.
🫔 Took a tamale-making class with my mom and got paired with a couple clearly on a first date. Awkward, funny, memorable.
🎁 Hosted our annual full-family cookie-making party — hundreds of cookies, boxes packed, generosity multiplied.
🧝 Remembered to move Clyde the Elf every night so far. A small but meaningful December victory.
✈️ Prepping to host Christmas Eve, pull off Santa duties, and leave for an international trip on December 27 — joyful, full and a little breathless.
All of it together feels like December distilled: joy and grief, efficiency and chaos, meaning and mess — living side by side without apology.
Currently Ingesting
📚 The Christmas Train — cozy, nostalgic, and familiar in the best way. (Also gifted this Christmas Train, which is adorable in all its fold-out board book charm.)
📘 The Christmas Bookshop — twinkly and comforting.
🎧 A Christmas Carol on Audible (listen free!), performed by Hugh Grant — a surprisingly tender listen.
📕 Unreasonable Hospitality — a timely reminder that care, excellence and generosity are choices we make again and again.
🎄 And every Christmas movie I can find.
If December has taught me anything this year, it’s this:
The season doesn’t ask us to be calm.
It asks us to be present.
To notice the moments that matter.
To hold what’s heavy without letting go of what’s hopeful.
To remember that every story — including our own — is unfolding across time.
Past.
Present.
Future.
And here we are, in the middle of it all.
Your Turn
💌 What has December been holding for you so far? Hit reply and tell me—I read every response, and may share a few (anonymously) in a future Dispatch.
Until next time,
Christin
❤️🔥 Subscribe for more brief insights + practical tools…
…to help you build both meaningful work and a livable life.
Your December sounds more festive than mine with the cookie making and the cooking class. We're going to have Mexican food for our Christmas, but I'll be buying the tamales from Rosas.
I went shopping and saw boxes of Chex on display so I just had to make Chex mix, and I'm basically the only one who ate it, aside from a friend I shared some with. I wrapped the few gifts I needed wrap, but with grown children and no grandchildren, Christmas isn't quite as magical as it used to be. But, I know, I should do things to make it magical.