My name is Will DeFrees, and this is the Sunday Scaries Podcast, your cure for the Sunday Blues.

I've never been very good at saying goodbye, or perhaps it's knowing when to say goodbye.

It's the Irish exit at a party.

It's a see later when neither of you want to actually say those words goodbye.

It's hugging outside of a restaurant only to realize you're both walking in the same direction as the other, and you have that awkward exchange.

When you say goodbye, it means that something is ending, and maybe that's why I'm so averse to it.

It's the resistance to change. It's the aversion to having to confront something that's finite.

Which is probably why I've had a hard time figuring out how to say lately, or what to say lately, in regard to this situation.

It's not a goodbye, but it's certainly more of a see later.

As of today, the Sunday Scaries Podcast will be taking a bit of a break. Pause.

While you may have seen the writing on the wall daily with an uptick and retail therapy episodes, there has been a lot that's gone into this decision for me.

The reasons are fairly straightforward. First and foremost, we're a month away from welcoming our second child.

This will be a strain on my time and energy, obviously, and I want to remove any stressors from my life to enjoy this time as much as I can.

And given how time-intensive the episodes of Sunday Scaries are, this only made sense.

Number two is that it's really time for retail therapy to breathe a little bit.

Retail therapy has been growing and growing and growing, larger with the listenership than the Sunday Scaries Podcast listenership at this point.

So given that recent success, it's time to see what could become of it.

Being less time consuming than Scaries episodes, going from biweekly to weekly episodes of retail therapy, will really give Barrett and I the push that we need to let it become something more, or become what it needs to be.

And number three, it's really just time for a break.

For the past year or so, Sunday Scaries has grown in ways that exist outside of the podcast, the newsletter, the Instagram following, for example, which has taken my time away from the show more than I'd really like to admit.

And frankly, that part of my brain that made the Sunday Scaries Podcast what it is, it's a little tired.

And given that I've done it weekly for over five years now, I do truly think it's time for a much needed break and even more, a much needed refresh, which is exactly what I'm going to do.

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