A reminder that rest doesn’t need to be earned.
This weekend, Husband and I got our flu shots and COVID boosters. We knew there was a good chance we’d be knocked on our asses for at least 24 hours afterward, so we planned ahead: ordered enough Chinese takeout to last a few meals and made sure the fuzzy blankets were on the couch. He called it scheduled server maintenance, aka planned downtime.
Even though I knew I’d likely feel shitty, I declared, “Even if I feel fine tomorrow, I’m still going to potato.”
If I didn’t feel sick, Past Amanda would’ve done laundry, organized something, maybe finally gotten around to writing that thing that’s been sitting in drafts (and/or this post). Rest, in my old vocabulary, was a backup plan, not a first choice.
I think a lot of us — especially those wired to be responsible, ambitious, or perpetually “on top of things” — have learned to see rest as something we have to earn. You rest after the work is done. Or you rest because you’re sick, or burned out, or on vacation (and even then, probably not fully).
Rest, in other words, needs a reason.
And without that reason, it feels indulgent. Lazy. Like you’re breaking an unspoken rule about what it means to be a good adult.
We often praise people for doing a lot — not necessarily doing well, just doing more. We even talk about rest in productivity terms: “Rest is important so you can recharge.” We ask coworkers when they’re back from PTO if they’re refreshed and recharged, so they can… get back to work.
While it’s true that rest fuels good work, it’s telling that we still frame it as fuel for work.
Ew.
It’s hard to imagine saying, “Rest is important because sometimes you need to not be doing anything.” That doesn’t sound very… ambitious, does it?
When I think about Saturday, I did nothing useful. Not one productive thing, besides walking Kona in the morning, and even that was a struggle. I spent the day rotting on the couch, binging the new Denver season of Love Is Blind (btw, this season is particularly cringe), and napping. I felt so terrible that I could barely sit up to eat.
Yes, I had a perfectly good reason to be completely useless. But I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt about it — where Past Amanda would’ve felt bad or stressed about “losing a day,” even if she’d technically “earned” a lazy one. There used to be this tension between wanting to rest and wanting to deserve it.
When we only rest after we’ve earned it, rest becomes another form of productivity — we’re resting because we need it to be productive. True rest is not transactional. It’s not a break between “real” things. It is the real thing. There’s something radical about letting yourself rest without a reason. It interrupts the flow of hustle culture. It reminds you that you don’t need to justify your existence with output.
You’re allowed to be a lump of mashed potatoes on a couch, watching truly trash TV, with no greater purpose than just being. This weekend was a good reminder that I need more planned downtime. You probably do too.
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