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I’m propped in bed, with my new bed desk over my lap. It’s a wonderful piece of equipment, and I’ve got my laptop propped up on it using a stand I normally use at my office desk. That brings the computer up to eye-level, and my separate keyboard and mouse are lower. It feels ergonomically comfy.
Calm jazz workflow—well, that’s what Spotify calls it—is tinkling out of the computer’s speakers. I’m burning a Falling Leaves candle that smells like vanilla and burnt sugar and maybe old books (and nothing at all like falling leaves).
The BedJet is running, as it always is when I’m in bed.
Oh, what’s a BedJet? I swear I’m not going to go all Facebook Ad on you, but wow, do I love this thing (and that link’ll get you 10% off). Basically, it blows air into a special sheet at the exact temperature you want. A bit chilly? Turn up the heat. Suddenly too hot? Blow cool air all over your body. It was much too expensive and it’s one of my favorite things in the whole world. The very first thing I did when we decided to move to New Zealand, even before looking into a visa for my wife, was to email BedJet and ask if we could use it on NZ voltage. The answer was yes, thank God.
So yeah, I’m pretty cozy in bed right now.
And what I’m really doing isn’t writing out these words or drinking the coffee at my right hand (though I am technically doing those things.)
What I’m trying to do is remember that resting is my One Job right now.
I’m a workaholic, no doubt about it. If I like to do anything, I like to do it in excess, and I love my job.
It turns out that I’m the same workaholic I’ve been since I was a twelve-year-old in summer, trying to figure out how to fit in time to climb trees while still having enough daylight hours to start a new small business like making bumper stickers or selling macrame plant hangers on commission at the local nursery.
A couple of years ago I was reading through my journals, and I found this sentence, written at age seventeen: “I’ve been so busy with work, I haven’t had any time to relax.”
It’s actually a little reassuring to know I’ve always been like this.
People don’t really change very much.
I mean, I change all the time, constantly refining my processes, fiddling with how I do things. I change in a myriad small ways, yes.
But those are on the surface.
At base, at my core, I’m still the Rachael I was at five, worried that I would get a question wrong and lose the undying love of my kindergarten teacher. Working, and doing things right, was how I felt worthy, even then.
So you know what? I figure I’m never going to change on this front.
And instead of fighting my true nature, I’ve been tricking it.
We all know that multitasking is a myth and that it actually wastes time, rather than saving it.
With that in mind, I’ve been choosing to think that at any given moment, I only have One Job.
One job.
Not a list. (I do have a list—of course a person like me has lists of her lists—but I try to forget that.)
At any given second, I ask myself, what’s my one job, right now?
Then I hurl myself into it, like the excellent worker bee I am.
Luckily, I have some training in single-tasking. When I’m well, my daily goal as a full-time writer is to write or revise for three to four hours a day. Everything else (email, teaching, podcasting) must fit around that.
And when I’m writing, I’m just writing. The internet is turned off. If I need to research something, I make a note to look it up later—even one glance at the internet is enough to suddenly interest me in buying a new notebook or a light-up mood ring. My phone is set to silent and turned face-down so I can’t even see it brighten if a text lands. When I’m writing, I’m only doing one thing, and that thing is writing.
Now? I’m using that single-mindedness for everything else, too. When I’m doing admin work, I’m not checking Twitter. When I’m podcasting, I don’t check email.
And when it’s my one job to rest, I rest.
I give up the fight, and I lay down my weapons. That little voice in my head shouts, “Slacker!” and instead of flinching, simply say, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It’s like answering the door to a religious zealot. There’s no point in arguing with a person pressing a heaven-sent pamphlet on you.
When I slam the door on the rude, Puritanical voice that lives rent-free in my head, I don’t think about it anymore. The fact that it has to trudge back to its car in the rain carrying unwanted fliers isn’t really my problem.
I’ve already defined my one job, and it’s up to me to get it right.
Oh, a challenge? Yes, please! Watch me rest better than anyone else! BOOM! ADMIRE MY RESTING FACE – IS IT NOT RESTFUL?
Brains and bodies need real rest, y’all. Yours included.
When we’re resting and not thinking too hard, our brain’s default mode network (DMN) switches on, and does some cleanup, making connections and solving problems in a looser, freer way than when we’re focused on thinking.
How do you make sure your DMN gets time to light up and perform this magic? Some people walk, others take long showers or do the dishes by hand. Some people take long drives, other clean out the hamster cage.
Me?
I watch Real Housewives and no, I’m not ashamed of it (much).
Reality shows with contests? Too stressful. But women just gossiping about other women while wearing makeup that defies belief? My brain doesn’t have to do a lick of heaving lifting. I can let their admittedly mostly-vapid words roll around in my head while in the background my default mode network is cleaning up what I left behind on the page.
And I treat watching those women’s earrings bobble above their pendulous, expensive breasts like it’s my job, because right now, rest is my job.
In the past, I’ve run into the problem that Alex Pang points out in his book, Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less:
“When we define ourselves by our work, by our dedication and effectiveness and willingness to go the extra mile, then it’s easy to see rest as the negation of all those things. If your work is your self, when you cease to work, you cease to exist.”
Sure, he’s pointing out that we should get over that—that we should open ourselves to the idea that we’re more than our work.
But honestly, decades have shown that I’m probably not going to change on this one, so I’m redefining rest to be part of my work. As soon as I say that, I can almost feel my hand rising into the air. Oooh, I know this one! Pick me!
I can be good at rest if I just change my view of it.
If I can earn a gold star, I’ll attempt anything, it turns out. And I’m a goddamn adult. Guess who buys the gold stars in this house? That’s right! I DO.
So I’m giving myself the stars, as many as I want.
(All of them. I want all the stars.)
I’m reminding myself that my worth isn’t linked to my productivity, and it never will be, no matter how much I want it to be.
I’m worthy of those gold foil stickers.
I’m worthy of this BedJet. And the jazz. And the candle. And the wife who just popped her head in the bedroom to see if I needed more water, which I would have also been worthy of had I not just had two glasses in the last hour.
And I’m worthy of rest, right now.
Just as I am.
What about you?
Does rest need to be your one job at some point today?
You’re worthy of rest.
You’re worthy of it not when you get enough done, or when you do something right, or when you prove to everyone else that you deserve it (including yourself), but right now. Whenever you need or want it.
So I’m sending you with the power of my mind the permission to do something, anything, like watch reality TV while your brain and body repair themselves.
And then give yourself all the gold stars, because you’ve earned them, just by making it this far in life.
