Rest and Retreat

For your writing’s sake, take a break. Please.

There, have I got your attention? Now I’m going to be even more radical and say, for your sake and the sake of the people around you and people in general, maybe put that writing down and do something else, or even do nothing, at home or away?

As I intimated last week, taking time away from the pressures of writing can give your brain space to loosen up and think quietly in the background, readying you to come back fresher and with new insights. So that’s good, but also — and this is what matters most to me today — it’s good and important for us as people. Life is more than work, even when you’re “doing something you love” (maybe even more then).

If we don’t or can’t, that way burnout lies, at the least.

I know that yelling at people to rest is not the solution and is actually part of the problem, thinking we can change huge structural problems with a slight tweak to our individual behavior, and still. The exigencies of existing in late capitalism, including the pressures of academia no matter how you are associated with it, are real, very real, even if they manifest differently for administration, tenured and tenure-track professors, adjuncts and precarious workers, and people like me, who work tangentially around academia and are also subject to the stresses of independent business life, whatever that really is.

So, yes, productivity — especially summer productivity — is important. But we matter too, outside the productivity metric. I don’t know how to balance those two things, and it’s absolutely not my place to determine for you — people I know, people I don’t know, anyone — how you should do anything, even rest, or what you should prioritize according to my values or the calendar’s cultural rhythms.

All I am going to say (over and over again) in this post is, if you can, maybe rest a bit somehow?

It’ll be good in the long run for all the things you have to do if you are still here to do them, without destroying yourself. It’s also, I’ve heard, good for you. As a person in this world. To be able to be in this world, however is best for you, according to you. If that is working through all rest, so be it. This post is for others.

I’m not going to get all Self-Care (TM) on you, I promise. I’m not going to start selling you spa retreats, or expensive nail treatments (although mine are currently neon green, pink, and orange, and it’s making writing this just before vacation when I really need a break much more amusing), or the newest “healthy” lifestyle craze or retreat space. You get enough of that from everywhere else, if your media looks anything like mine — and probably also if it doesn’t.

I’m also not going to shame you for not getting the ideal amount of sleep (whatever that is) in whatever form we’re all supposed to be curating our rest this week. Or for not resting in the most restful way at the best resting times according to resting science (if that even exists). All that is, frankly, bullshit. And now I’ve sworn, for the first time in these blogs. Welcome to me, I guess.

Mostly this is a note from someone who, as you read this, will actually be on vacation doing fun coastal Maine things, but who, as she writes this, hasn’t had anything even vaguely vacation-y since December, and even that was short and snatched from work, family, and life obligations. My life is less complicated than most people’s, and I’m still tired, deeply tired.

Taking time off, and maybe even away, isn’t easy.

It often requires a heady amount of planning and heavy workload leading up to your time off that can make the rest feel much less restful. And it’s often not financially or practically possible, given life obligations, personal circumstances, care responsibilities, mobility or illness issues, and the like. For someone like me, who runs her own business and therefore who has to plan her time off into her underlying budget as a loss, it can be a stressor, to be scheduled in as a necessary evil. And let’s be clear, that’s just wrong. So very wrong.

I think about now I’m supposed to entreat you to maximize your time better, take up a hobby, preferably one that is somehow stealth professional development, and gain more skills, for the future you or even the future apocalypse, if you’re feeling extra gloomy (and maybe realistic). Or, you know, take up a side hustle, a phrase I can’t even say without thinking of crabs disco line dancing.

But that’s — have you guessed it yet? — also bullshit, serious neoliberal capitalist bullshit. I mean, if that appeals to you, then do it. Do it because it appeals to you, maybe brings you some joy. Or do it because you need to, for whatever reason. But if it sounds exhausting and like another obligation to be a better, more productive consumer of time, then might I humbly suggest just . . . not.

Rest is not itself a good, another obligation.

I thought I was going to have a few paragraphs here to talk about the current trends in trying to think rest outside capitalism’s pull toward productivity and maximization. But you probably know the memes better than I do. Or perhaps you’ve read Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack essays on rest — both within the context of pandemic pressures and exhaustions and millenial burnout — or her book on burnout (which I’ve still to read, although I’d like to, at some point).

Or perhaps you’re thinking now of Ijeoma Oluo’s essay that argues that rest is only revolutionary when we all can do it. She points out not just the limitations of what I’m saying this week but also its counterrevolutionary potiential, if you’re not going to fundamentally take some of your own time and capital to work against the structures that make rest a problem for all, and for many even more than others.

And yet, for many people, simply naming the fact that rest is part of being human starts to open up space for taking a breath and allowing ourselves to imagine rest, especially people whose rest has not just been denigrated but has been actively denied or disallowed. Let’s not retreat into individual self-care. Let’s not rest — if we want or choose to — without the awareness of rest as an opening up to others, an opening up of rest for all of us, to the best of our ability.

To be honest with you, I’m mostly writing this blog post to feed the algorithm.

So that it doesn’t get hungry and grumpy while I’m off doing something that is not work and then penalize me for it. So that capitalism doesn’t even realize I’m resting, even if I know it, even while the tourism industry and associated consumer indicators know exactly where I’ve gone, where, and how.

I’d love if it you’ve been reading this, especially if you’ve got this far and even more if it’s speaking to you at all, but it’s also here because, professionally, I’ve been told I’m supposed to make sure never to miss a week of writing. The algorithm likes consistency.

And I like working — on material that matters to me with people who interest me. I also like eating, which I’m sure comes as a huge surprise from someone who is not herself an algorithm (or is that even correct? I don’t really know or understand the limits between human and cybernetic beings, and am currently choosing mostly to tune out the hype on AI right now, because — have I mentioned? — I’m tired).

I also really like this whole vacation thing, at least that’s what I remember. Hopefully as you read this, that’s being confirmed and I’m resting in that active way that entails a lot of going places and doing things and probably not sleeping enough, more ready to come home and be me here, less tired and maybe less sweary.

Although the last is never actually going to happen. And I don’t want it to.