I’m well rested, thank you

The journal entry read:

September 6, 2023 7:23 AM Back at my desk once again. I’m so frustrated and annoyed to even be here. This weekend I had a good talk with my sister about the idea of taking a break and I’m fully commited to the idea of something like a gap year, but my biggest fears are a few things: Will I be prepared financially? What will I do? What if I don’t want to come back? What if this isn’t a need for a break but a call for a new life? The answer to,“Who am I and what is my gift to the world?”

5 hours later I was laid off from my job.

When I got the news I shut my laptop, looked up at the sky, and let out a massive sigh of relief. I’d never felt so free like a physical weight was lifted off of my shoulders. I wanted to cry but the tears wouldn’t fall. I wanted to feel anger but only peace was available. All I could think to say was, “God, thank you.” After months of praying, petitioning, and planning for an opportunity to just breathe, it felt like I was finally getting my shot — It just wouldn’t look the way I expected it to.

I took a few laps around the neighborhood just to soak it all in and send off the mass “You’ll never guess what happened” text. The understandable response from family, friends, and colleagues was to remind me that losses happen and I’ll land back on my feet. That it happens to the best of us. They tell me it’s not the end of the world.

Is it crazy to say that I wanted it to be?

Is it crazy to admit out loud that I never wanted to subscribe to that version of the world again?

In the days that followed, I reflected deeply on the years of time invested in this trajectory. I reminisced on my first advertising job, the reason I’m in NY. I thought back to the feeling of working on my first campaign. Sitting in rooms and being in conversations that many people, myself included, only dreamed about. I thought about all of the brilliant people I’d gotten to work with.

Then I sat with the hard truths. The truth that I was exhausted and unhappy. That I needed to make peace with mentally and emotionally falling out of love with my career trajectory as it stood. I had to sit with the fact that despite interviewing for 9 months I was still uncertain about what the next direction looked and felt like. I quickly realized that there was no contingency plan, for my career or my life.

Deep down I knew that this was the moment that I’d been pouring over in my notebooks, it was just a matter of trusting and accepting the gift God gave me — total rest.

What was the next item on the agenda? Zero. Zilch. Nada.

When I would float the idea of a break by people my goal was always to have the freedom and flexibility to do nothing and be nowhere. I used to think that meant having the ability to run off to backpack across Bali or drown myself endlessly in learning how to create content for my platform, write, and take classes because society tells us that a break isn’t useful if it isn’t productive, intentional, or well curated.

Doing nothing is counterintuitive, but I don’t believe that my soul was created to go full speed all the time — even with the things that I love.

Nothingness made room for the stillness that allowed me to finally be able to unravel, cry, scream, wonder, and dream again after years of running. It created a space where 10, 18, and 29-year-old me could convene and be re-introduced to the ideas I’d abandoned. It took a brush to what had become my greyscale world and made it vibrant again. That, I learned, was the power of rest.

7 weeks later and I’m extremely blessed to say that I am starting a new job at the end of the month. I’m so excited to not just head into this new chapter of my career but to continue living a well-rested life. To achieve that I’m letting go and unlearning the concepts I’ve built around taking time to turn completely “off”.

I’m unlearning that rest is a fleeting trend

When I had the idea of approaching my layoff as a period of rest my first thought was, “Am I just following TikTok too much?” It’s easy to treat rest like it’s a part of the trend cycle. When presented through the lens of crazes like the soft life, lazy girl jobs, and the great resignation it can seem like the notion of rest as a lifestyle is just another fleeting idea from the “lazy generation”. Look closer and you’ll see that the concept of rest can be traced all the way back to its biblical roots:

The 4th Commandment (Exodus 20:10-11): “…but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

As an Adventist, honoring the Sabbath (taking a full day from work and life obligations for worship and restoration) was foundational to my upbringing. Every Saturday we went to church, came home, ate, took a nap, and did nothing until sunset. What one would assume was pure boredom (okay, sometimes it was) turned into moments where we talked, we laughed, we debated, and we bonded with ourselves and each other.

I didn’t realize it then but it was showing me the formula for what resting should look like. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown to appreciate the clarity of that commandment. Rest is holy and sacred. It was designed not for the privileged but as a gift to every living being. Knowing that even God needed rest after his work makes taking the time to turn off and tune in even more valuable to me.

I’m unlearning the resistance against my resting

I’ve come to realize that for the bulk of us life will have to force us into the rest we’re avoiding. Be it a layoff, a loss, or a breakup, it’s tough embracing all the unwanted changes that have robbed us of the comforting familiarity of feeling stressed and stuck. For weeks I still woke up at 5 a.m., hit the coffee shop, opened my laptop by 8 a.m., and got to work — on what I have no clue. I just knew my mind still needed to clock into something. It only knew how to be at work.

It took a conversation with my therapist to recognize that even after escaping months of burnout and emotional exhaustion I was now channeling my energy back into jam-packing my days full of meaningless activities. There was an overwhelming obligation to continue showing up in the ways that I had been as if that path wasn’t running me straight toward a brick wall. In our last session together, she asked me what was the fixation with rapidly evolving into what’s next instead of healing what’s now. I was shook. I was so quick to keep pushing through in my motion that I didn’t stop to check and see if I was really moving forward or actually running away. Without assessment, I was letting ‘business as usual’ turn my habits and routines into a barrier between processing my raw emotions and making actual life changes.

I’m unlearning that rest is the enemy of hustle

I firmly believe that one of my ancestor's wildest dreams was to rest.

To become first generation-rested I must learn to reject the idea that I am designed to constantly be producing or productive. I have to decouple myself from the idea that without work I have no worth. I need to eliminate the idea that if I’m not running full speed toward my goals every chance I get I don’t love it enough. I can say right now with full confidence that my exhaustion has never harvested any fruit worth tasting.

I can’t tell you the breakthroughs these 7 weeks of rest provided my passions, my career, and my creative ideas. It’s like the answers that I was running from were finally able to catch up with me the moment I stopped moving. Rest will challenge the momentum toward our dreams and aspirations but pause breeds clarity for better visions.

Toni Morrison says, “You are not the work you do; you are the person you are,” and as I enter into this new phase of life I’m keeping that as my north star. To remove myself from this self-sustained grind culture and into a world of prioritized living, being, and existing.

So if you’re wondering how I’ve been doing, just know that I am well-rested, thank you.