The word rest conjures up for me, images of hammocks swaying with the breeze. Or maybe just floating down a lazy river. Taking a deep, deep breath of ocean air and letting it out slowly, with a long hisssssss. Or perhaps a cold rainy day, snuggled under my blankets with a good book and the pitter patter of rain on the window. Rest is a word that indicates a stoppage, a pause to all that is going on around us. Have you ever thought that the word itself is actually a verb?
This whole month we’ve been talking about ways to stay active and engaged with your work. Dreamers tend to be driven, creative people. This also means that we tend to also be really stressed out a lot of the time. There is no greater critic of our progress or our quality of work than ourselves. I am constantly reminded of how little I wrote this week, or how unimaginative the story 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 rig 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! But this is not always the right answer to our problems.
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. We all have our own passions 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 sounds like the last thing you should do doesn’t it? After all, eight out of five blog posts on this site are to encourage you to action, to spur you onward. However, the best way to destroy a dream is to turn it into a giant ball of stress. Sometimes the best thing we can do is to leave it alone for awhile. Recharge. Think of other things. Rest.
The reason I mentioned that rest is a verb at the beginning is simple. It is because rest is hard. It’s one thing to say, “Get up and go outside, look at the sky and not think of your dreams, or your bills, or your health.” It’s another thing entirely to actually do it. We do not casually rest. We have to fight for it. Carve out a time to go through with it. We have to set our minds on other things and 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.