What Rest Actually Looks Like for Creative Business Owners

Everyone's talking about taking a break over the holidays. You should switch off, relax, and recharge.

The reality for many creative business owners, especially if you're neurodivergent, is that the end of year festivities can be one of the most exhausting times of the year.

You're out of your usual routine. You're in different environments. There's an expectation to be social and "on" when you're already depleted from the year. Family gatherings, travel, noise, disrupted sleep patterns. The very things that are supposed to be restful can leave you feeling more drained than a full week of work.

Then there's the guilt. You're supposed to be relaxed and rejuvenated. Everyone keeps saying "enjoy your break" as if rest is automatic when you're not at your desk.

Here's what I want you to know: if the holidays don't feel restful, you're not doing it wrong. Recovery for creative business owners, particularly those with higher sensory sensitivities, doesn't always look like what everyone else is doing.

It might mean carving out alone time between gatherings, even if that means excusing yourself to sit quietly in another room for twenty minutes. It might mean saying no to some invitations, even though people expect you to show up. It might mean bringing familiar routines or objects with you when you travel, the things that ground you.

For some of you, actual recovery might not happen in December at all. It might happen in January, when things quiet down and you're back in your own space.

So what does rest actually look like?

It's worth getting curious about what genuinely restores your energy, not what you think should restore it. For some creative entrepreneurs, that might be creating for the sake of creating, with no product to sell and no outcome to achieve. Just making something because you want to.

Silence and solitude can be deeply restorative, along with a digital reset. Long stretches of uninterrupted time where nobody needs anything from you.

Time in nature works for others, walking without a destination or a fitness tracker telling you how far you've gone.

For some, rest means having a completely empty schedule for a day, with permission to do absolutely nothing if that's what you need.

Rest also means noticing what depletes you and giving yourself permission to protect your energy, even during the season when you're expected to be endlessly available and cheerful.

This doesn't make you antisocial or ungrateful. It makes you someone who understands that sustainable work requires genuine rest, and genuine rest looks different for everyone.

If you're heading into the new year knowing you need to get better at this, at understanding your energy and working with it rather than against it, that's exactly what we'll be exploring in the Energy Mapping Workshop on 24 January. We'll map out your unique patterns together so you can start making decisions that actually support how you function. You can book your ticket here.

For now, give yourself permission to rest in whatever way actually works for you. The world can wait.