In the name of rest

Rest may seem a strange topic for LinkedIn, this bastion of busy and humblebragging and results-based reflections and just trying to keep up with the latest paper-webinar-event-funding thing that everyone else is talking about.

But this is exactly why. If I hadn't been so busy doing things, I would have posted this in May, during Mental Health Month. Of course, every day should be mental health day. We need to check in on each other more, but also on ourselves. And find more time for not doing much of anything.

When offered my new job, I knew I needed time off. But how much? My new team's conclusion: why not take the summer?

This didn't compute at first. Two months? Didn't they need me to start yesterday, as our industry normally demands? Even harder to understand: what would I DO with myself?

My husband said, "You have to do this, you know you need to." He also said, "jeez, get a life already." My response: "I don't have one!"

That's when I knew it was time to step back.

Taking a whole chunk, if you can, is important. Two or three weeks off get rapidly full of things that aren't rest. Just when you start to think about rest, it's over.

What is not rest:

• Taking a two-week road trip out to the West of the U.S. in a small camper van crammed with your family (tho it was marvelous and I quite recommend it).
• Bringing your children and pets and car and self to countless doctors and dentists and orthodontist and vet and mechanic appointments that have been piling up for months or in some cases years.
• Reviewing your finances and health insurance.
• Caring for other relatives and friends, or attending family gatherings.
• Catching up on a million emails you are (still) behind on with old colleagues, students, friends, family.
• Helping to finally clean out all your college (and yes) high school books and letters and who-knows-what-all from your parents’ attic.
• Being on social media and reading the news and worrying and worrying and worrying. 
• If you are relocating for the job: relocating.

What, for me, is rest:

• Doing absolutely nothing. This could mean, for instance, sitting or lying outside, in the breeze, a little in the sun, maybe with a view or even just trees and grass, sometimes swatting bugs.
• Paradoxically perhaps, but for me, critical: working my body – walking, swimming, running, hiking, biking, yoga, and more walking.
• Eating good, simple food. And ice cream. Preferably a black-and-white malt.
• Listening to music while making food, or not making food.
• Reading books, and magazine articles. Especially books that don’t have even a whiff of statistics in them. And even: reading poetry (which I had not really done since college).
• Watching movies I always meant to watch, or rewatch.
• Beating my aunt at cards.
• Not – emphatically not – thinking about: work, articles I recently read that pertain to work, or even, though I love them, my teams at work.

It is important to say that taking unpaid time off between jobs is a privilege. As parents or other caregivers, rest also means securing time where others do the caring: either paid or, if lucky, through family. Many people, who have many others depending on them, would struggle to take such time off. In my case, the opportunity cost gave me serious pause. We talked it over as a family and concluded we could make it work. But I also had to accept that, once the fundamentals are covered, there are things more important than money. Mental health is just about at the top of that list.

I am posting this now at the end of my period of rest, and the time away from my computer and all the doing has been a complete reset. I literally felt my muscles unclenching, my heart rate slowing, my body getting both stronger and more comfortable with moving and not moving. My mind and heart more at ease with the lack of urgency.

So: take rest. Whenever you can. At lunchtime, in the evenings, on weekends, during a long weekend you take just because. When you take vacation – and please, let us all actually take the vacation we earn – really take it. When changing jobs, try to take a LOT of rest in between. And if you're hiring, offer a lot of rest beforehand. In the wise words of the legendary chief of party, Thelma Khelghati: "The house is burning now, and it will still be burning when I get back."

Your organization needs people who are rested, fresh, and – in my case (and too many of us) - recovered from burnout. Each of us needs this recovery, this healing, the distance from everything that seemed so urgent, and the fresh perspectives rest brings.