I organized my office to be a place of comfort, both for myself and my students. There are scrolls, books, fidget toys, plushies, small hard candies, and comfortable seating specifically to encourage students to be comfortable when they stop by. Students regularly tell me that my office is “Cozy.” What they notice first is the comfortable chair with the soft pillow and the shelf of fidget toys and hard candy. What they don’t notice is a small, bright yellow Post-it note, set at exactly my eye level, beside my computer. It is not particularly prominent to anyone but me. But for me, it is the most important thing on that wall.
It reads: Rest is holy; it is not a reward.
I place a lot of value on my productivity, which is not a particularly healthy mindset to have. Sadly, I gained that mindset in my previous employer. Before my current position, I was employed at a toxic work location that had a lot of negative attributes. One of those was the expectation that employees would be productive in all situations without reward. As a parent of small children, I worked in that environment under a cloud of fear that I would be fired. I was undervalued and underpaid, and the experience left lasting scars on how I operate in the workforce. I also have a streak of perfectionism that gets in the way of just getting the work done. So, I may finish my work, but since it is never perfect, there are times I will spend a lot of effort and energy to fix those things that don’t necessarily need to be fixed. I have learned to remind myself that I “can’t let perfection get in the way of good enough”, but that is a discussion for another day.
So, this is how I found myself in Spring Break of 2021, running on empty.
I recognized that I had not taken a break in over a year. I had been in the same basic situation the year before with the COVID flip to online, and my teaching over the summer had meant I had little to no actual breaks. I chose to use my winter break to refine the OER textbook I had worked on, and I had even added additional work with the district OER committee. I could hear my internal voice telling me that I really needed to take a break, but I kept thinking that I needed to prepare for my class stuff with the computer issues, and I felt guilty about “letting my students down.”
Dear reader, have you ever felt guilty about taking a break? Were you ever afraid that stopping would cause more problems than just getting through it all? Have you ever said to yourself, “I will rest when…” and then just continued? Because that was the frame of mind I was in. I kept charging forward. I just need to make it to Spring Break. I just need to make it to Summer. I just need to get through Summer School. When you push yourself that hard, something is going to give.
I have been teaching for over 25 years now. I hit burnout at year 15 and had to take a year’s sabbatical to find myself and my love of teaching again. Having gone through it once, I could see the signs in myself. The passion that had carried me through years of teaching was fading out. And my body, which had been keeping score all along, finally sent me a bill I couldn’t ignore. I had to take that sabbatical to find my way back to the love of teaching.
And so, here I was, winding my way into a similar situation when I found myself in a conversation with a dear friend. When I pushed back on all of the things that I needed to do before I could rest, he said, “Rest is holy; it is not a reward.” A light came on in my brain. I came to the sudden realization that I had been treating my rest as a reward for my hard work rather than something I deserved, regardless of the level of effort I had been putting in. I wrote down his words on a Post-it note that now sits at eye level beside my computer as a reminder that I can’t decide to put off the break I need. I need to take those breaks, or I will be the one to break.
That which is holy is something to be protected and adhered to. And so I had to flip the script.
For me, making rest holy meant a change in how I approached my days, my weeks, and my vacation days. For my days, I allotted an hour of rest where I walk with my husband and share my day. It allows me to relax, talk to someone I care about, and get a little exercise. For my weeks, I have one day each week that I save as a day of rest. I might schedule family or friend activities, but it is a day when I plan my time to avoid thinking about work-related tasks. Sometimes that day is a weekend day, and sometimes I will reserve that day during the week, but there is always one day of rest where I don’t check my email, don’t look at my to-do list, and if something comes up, I will send myself a note to look at it when I am not resting. Because that rest has to be protected.
For me, gardening has become a big part of my rest. I spend time cultivating my plants and forming my own sanctuary just outside my door. The joy I felt when my pomegranate tree cutting got its first new leaves, or my amaryllis bloomed, that joy is like a deep, cleansing breath of fresh air to the soul.
For my vacation days, I set clear boundaries for myself. My proclivity for working and staying productive means that I can’t just sit around and do nothing. At least, not yet. But I am working on it. I sit in the garden with a cup of tea and watch the wildlife dance around the plants. I sit in the rocking chair in my home office and read a book that has no other purpose than to be entertaining. I walk with my family or friends and talk about all the things happening in their lives and mine.
And here is what I am learning. While I find myself more productive after my rest, I am coming to realize that my true goal is to recognize and embrace the value of rest for the sake of rest. That rest itself is the payoff. And that by continuing to treat rest as holy and not a reward, I will eventually come to value rest as the goal. Rest will be how I get back to being the me that is filled with passion for painting, scuba diving, and herpetology. Rest will be how I return to doing those fulfilling things that I enjoy but have been putting off until “I have more time”.
So, dear reader, as I am reflecting on my goal to make rest holy and to stop treating rest as a reward for my hard work, I invite you to reflect on your own treatment of rest. Are you rewarding yourself with your days of rest, or are you making your rest the important and holy time that is necessary to sustain the best you that you can be?
If I could go back to the Spring Break of 2021, I would tell myself to stop stressing over all the work I thought I needed to get done and take that breather that I should have been taking. Because I needed a break. I may have taken one 8 weeks later, but rest is not something we can afford to keep putting off.
I have to remind myself regularly that rest is not a reward, which is why that Post-it still sits on my wall. I am just as busy today as I was then, but honestly, I am in a much better place. Because I am finally learning how to rest.
