The good news is that there will be more Louie. The bad news is that it won’t be coming until the Spring… of 2014.

You can’t blame Louis C.K. for taking more time off. After all, he does everything on his show, and there’s a limit on how much one human can do like that before needing a rest. He told reporters today:

“The last three seasons have been this surge of fun and work and stories, and it’s been great to share all this stuff, and I want to keep going. I want the show to keep getting better. That’s my goal, and I don’t want it to be making the donuts. I want it to keep being something that comes from somewhere fun and important, and I want it to stay funny. It’s a luxury that I asked for, which is more time to create Season Four.”

FX is continuing to pretty much give Louie what he wants and needs with few, if any, questions asked, and we — the audience, that is — have gotten a lot out of that arrangement, so if we have to wait about a year and a half for the next season, at least we know it’ll be worth the wait. Besides, from self-imposed hiatuses like Larry David’s long stretches between Curb seasons to the pauses in Mad Men due to network-creator differences, the end result tends to make everyone happy.

So we’ll wait.