It came like it always does. At first a small ache at the base of the neck, a bit of a runny nose. Before the end of the day, I am eating chicken noodle soup, wrapped in soft blankets and wiped out from a cold or sinus infection. This past week was the second time this year that this has happened. Was it Covid? No. Was I doing anything different? No. The cause is typically the same. I become overstressed and my body forces me to shut down for a few days. For many of us, we are constantly working on something. We work when we get home. We work on weekends. We think about work when we should be resting and this is the key. Rest is a vital yet often overlooked part of our well-being and health. Often it is ignored at our own peril.
Dreamers tend to be driven, creative people, constantly on the go, constantly working on one or three projects. This also means that we tend to get really stressed out. Stress is one of the major factors that lead to burnout today, be it from long complex tasks to time spent away from home, all of us are at risk of burning out due to stress. Usually, this stress is something that is self-taught. There is no greater critic of our progress or our quality of work than our own inner critic. I am constantly reminded of how little I wrote this week, or how unimaginative the current story project is. I am sure you are also the same way at times, that photo could have been better lit, that chord progression doesn’t quite right out, that paint color… it’s just not right! We are constantly pushing our boundaries, which is good for building our skills, but unchecked can leave us with heaps of stress. We can always go longer, try harder, do it better! It is how many of us were raised in America. I am not sure we know how to take a break and rest until our bodies force us to.
The desire to go longer, harder, faster is the path towards burnout. It is the relentless pursuit, wearing yourself down, down, down. Unchecked our ambitions will eventually break us. I try very hard to build in periods of rest in my life. A time dedicated to recharging, recuperating, and actually going outside every now and again. Sometimes it is just a dinner with dear friends. Other times it is a full-blown vacation, just doing what I love. Coming out of a year where I could do none of those things eventually took its toll. All of us have our own pursuits and inspirations and ways of unwinding. My friend in Georgia plays music on his guitar. My friend here in NC plays basketball. Others draw or paint, or just sit on the porch with a large glass of sweet tea and a good book. The important thing is to look up from the dream every now and again. Get up and get away from it, physically and mentally.
This is why I have really enjoyed dipping my toes into meditation over the past few years. Taking a few moments out of a crazy day to literally do nothing does not sound like a great productivity hack but I think it’s worth it. I first encountered mediation when I lived in Georgia, a Buddhist monk was visiting and a friend invited me to come. I found the process much like prayer. A settling of the mind. A quieting of the body. An exclusion of the hustle and bustle around you. It forces a sense of calm that I can take with me into this hectic world and I would encourage anyone to give it a try.
Rest is a verb. It is something you set out to do. If you give meditation or one of the other rest practices out there you might find that it is much harder than it seems it should be. It’s one thing to say, “Go look at the sky, don’t think of your dreams, or your bills, or your health.” It’s another thing entirely to actually go and do it. We are trained to do tasks from an early age but we are not taught to rest. We have to fight for it, we need to carve out a time to go through with it. We have to set our minds on quiet mode and struggle to keep it there. Rest is not easy. It is not resolved by leaving your phone off (though, let’s do that too). Rest is so easily ruined with an email, a text, or one of the other countless distractions we have in our lives. If you want to rest, you have to do it with purpose. You have to treat it like a verb.
Truth.