The Intermission
I went from spending three or more days a week on the road to barely leaving my apartment. From standing in stadiums with 55,000 people to sitting in a living room with the same three. From producing large-scale spectacles to finishing a 1,500-piece jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table. From eating popcorn for dinner to making elaborate meals just to put my creative energy somewhere.
It happened fast. One week I was running at full speed, the next the entire world stopped. And I did the thing I had never, not once in my adult life, given myself permission to do.
I paused.
Not gracefully. Not intentionally. And definitely not because I read a book about mindfulness. I paused because the choice was taken from me, along with almost everyone else in the world. The pause gave me back something I didn't know I'd lost.
When you are moving a million miles a minute, you don't always notice what you're missing. You just keep moving. The calendar fills, the flights stack up, the dinners become whatever you can grab between events, and the rhythm of it starts to feel like purpose. I was building big, meaningful things and I was proud of that work. But the speed had become so constant that I confused it with momentum. I thought the pace was proof I was going somewhere. I didn't realize it was also the reason I couldn't see where I already was.
When the world went quiet, I heard things I had been too busy to listen to. My kids, who were little then, talking about their days without me glancing at my phone. My own thoughts, which had been buried under logistics for years. A question that I didn't have the stillness to ask before: what do I actually want the next part of my life to look like?
I know what I'm describing will sound familiar to a lot of you. Some of you had the same forced stop. Some of you made the braver choice and stepped back on your own terms, knowing it was time, knowing you needed air even when the world wasn't requiring it. And some of you are reading this in the middle of the sprint right now, one eye on your inbox and one eye on whatever your version of a 1,500-piece puzzle might be if you ever gave yourself the time. All of those are real. None of them is wrong.
In live entertainment, we have a word for this. It is called the intermission. And it is not an accident.
Shows build in intermissions for a reason. Yes, the audience needs a restroom break and it's an opportunity to sell merchandise. That is the least interesting part, intermission exists because the performers need to catch their breath. The crew needs to reset the stage. And the audience needs time to absorb what they just experienced before the next act begins.
As a producer, the final scene before intermission is one of the most important beats in the entire show. You want the audience leaving their seats gasping. Hearts racing, senses on fire, emotionally saturated. You want them standing in that lobby replaying what they just saw, letting it settle into their bodies. You are not just giving them a break. You are giving the experience room to land.
I think about this all the time now when it comes to life beyond the arena.
We don't give our experiences room to land. We stack them. One meeting into the next, one milestone into the next, one phase of parenting or career or personal reinvention straight into the next without ever stopping to feel what just happened. We treat the pause as dead space. As lost time, as something to fill, or fix, or rush through. Intermission is not dead space. It is the stage reset.
If you've just come through something big, whether it was a career chapter that ended, a season of caregiving that consumed everything, a stretch of years where you were performing at full capacity in a role that no longer fits, the instinct is to immediately fill the gap. Update the resume and LinkedIn, book the meetings, start networking, prove you're still in it.
I know because I have done all of those things. I am a self-professed body in motion. If I have 30 free minutes, I am ordering groceries, texting friends, organizing a closet, prepping dinner for a meal I haven't even planned yet. Sitting still feels about as natural as wearing shoes on the wrong feet.
But when our heads are jammed with to-do lists and calendar reminders, we will always find something to do. The question is whether it is something that actually moves our story forward.
In the quiet, something useful sneaks in: clarity about what deserves the spotlight in your next act, ideas that were buried under the noise. The realization that half the urgency you feel is just bad stage management.
During my own intermission, I did not come up with a five-year plan. I did not journal my way to an epiphany. I reconnected with my family in a way I hadn't in years. I cooked, I slowed down (barely) enough to notice what was already in the room. And when I eventually started building again, I built differently. Not because I had some grand revelation, but because the pause gave me a different vantage point. I could see the stage more clearly when I wasn't running across it.
For those of you who chose to step back and are now stepping forward again, the intermission was not a gap on your resume. It was the part of the show that made the next act possible. The skills you sharpened, the perspective you gained, the clarity you found in the stillness, all of that goes with you.
For those of you who never got the pause and are still in the sprint, I want to gently suggest that the intermission does not have to be imposed on you. It can be 20 minutes on your calendar with no agenda, a weekend without plans, a morning where you savor your coffee and do not reach for your phone. It can be as simple as admitting to yourself that the curtain just came down on a chapter, and the next one does not have to start today.
If you are in the intermission right now, feeling restless and uncertain, and maybe a little lost without the performance to anchor you: the house lights are supposed to be on, that is by design. You are supposed to be able to see the room clearly right now. That is the whole point.
Your next act is coming. But the intermission was never the space between the story. It was always part of it. The house lights are on. Take a breath. Look around. Notice who is in the room with you.
The next act is going to be worth the wait.
From Your Biggest Champion,
Nicole
