rest, and being terrible at it / #3

notes from a chronic optimizer's first month on a sabbatical

10/10 cold brew, will always recommend / old hen coffee, singapore

Nearly a month into my sabbatical, and I’ve come to realize this: I’m really bad at resting.

I mean, not the physical act of laying down on my bed (though sometimes I am spectacularly bad at that too — ask my physio). No, I’m talking about the art of True Rest; the capital letters blinking in my head for an emphasis.

It started innocently enough. I sat down, as any good (ex?) over-achiever would, and immediately turned my sabbatical into a project: to-do lists, goals, milestones — all that tickled my brain.

(Insert an imaginary gleeful rub of palms together for my enthusiasm🫸 🫷)

The result? An exhausting oscillation between “I should rest” and “Why am I not being productive?” January became a tennis match between the angst of the latter, and the floundering attempts of the former.

The paradox of resting

The irony isn’t lost on me. For a word (sabbatical, that is) that resoundingly means “taking a rest”, my brain is insistent on treating it like something that can be tracked, reviewed, and optimized.

“What can I track to measure how well-rested I am?” (Sleep duration, quality, energy, mood, time… I’m tired just listing these)

“Am I doing rest correctly?” (Uhhh…)

It’s fascinating — and infuriating — witnessing myself not letting go of its default mode of working, and wanting to treat rest as a task to tackle.

Or worse, as a competition between past me vs. present me, and the idea that my worth is tied to the ability to perform — even when the thing I’m performing is not performing.

The anxiety of money

Then there is the financial side of things: always a loud, persistent undercurrent in my life (hello scarcity mindset, stop running away, I’m trying to unpack you through the sabbatical!).

There is the underlying urge to monetize, or at least, explore what’s next in the quest for income stability.

Let’s call it the ghosts of capitalist past, present and future, whispering and asking if this rest/pause/(lord please stop me from trying to rebrand a sabbatical right now)/reset is a luxury I can afford, as if life is a subscription service and that’s a premium add-on.

And while I’ve budgeted (complete with an Excel sheet with projections), somehow the $35 cafe visits every other day weren’t part of the plan. Yet, here I am.

---

Reframing rest

The strange dance of pretending to rest while mentally running a marathon is doing my head in, as is the guilt I feel when I do either/neither.

That quote about “we’re human beings, not human doings” springs into mind (mostly about how it’s always misattributed, but still), and it feels like I’ve been operationalizing for so long, so much, that I can’t flip that switch easily.

What does it mean to exist, without tying my worth to my outputs? That is the question I keep coming back to, and it’s a rough one.

It’s early days, I know, but I think I’ve learned this: rest is a skill.

And like any skill, practice makes perfect and permanence. Yet, it’s not something you master, but something you surrender to. And surrender doesn’t come easily when you’ve been on overdrive for decades.

So I’m trying — awkwardly, slowly, imperfectly — to lean into the discomfort and guilt, and unlearn the reflex to tie my worth to productivity.

Since rest is a skill, consider this my very first lesson.

---

One thing I liked this week

✍️ Writing: Things you’re allowed to do

Some excellent pointers on decision making, interpersonal relationships, and just great tips in general.

---

Other things

• I’m reading fiction again, instead of my usual genre of productivity and adjacent topics 😅

• I devoured Recursion by Blake Crouch, which features some of my favorite tropes of time travel, alternate universes, and exploring the what-ifs

• I also finally read Midnight Library by Matt Haig, after a million (four) years on my shelf; again with the same theme

• I might need some unpacking on why they are my favorite tropes…

• Do you have any fiction recs? Send them my way, please!

---

Until next time!

J.

---