Why is rest non-negotiable?
A quick story from Kristen on why rest is non-negotiable
Y’all, I was fine. No matter what anyone told you, no matter what my body told me, I was fine.
I had worked for nearly 18 months straight with limited time off. I had logged more air miles than I had hours in my own bed, but I was fine. Then, I got a weird sinus infection that turned out to be COVID, but that cleared up and I was fine!
And then I wasn’t.
Then I woke up one morning in December of 2022 coughing so hard that my body was jack-knifing. I could barely speak without talking. Double walking pneumonia and Long COVID glued me to my couch for two weeks. And didn’t let me stray far from it for an additional four.
So, I guess I wasn’t fine.
Surprise!
As I watched hour after hour of Blown Away, and Glow Up, and Netflix’s various other reality competition offerings, my brain was going four hundred miles an hour. I felt guilty that I wasn’t working–it was the longest consecutive time I’d ever taken off in my life, including vacations and surgeries–and that I wasn’t contributing to our little team or our bigger company. I was mortified that I needed that much grace and understanding–that was my job to give to other people, not to receive for myself.
Erin and Eleanor filled our Slack channels with commands to log off, reminders that I had just done a talk on the puritanical foundations of burnout, gentle prodding to listen to my body. It was a struggle, I can’t lie.
The thing was, my body didn’t give me an option. I was so weak, getting up the stairs was a challenge. I was forced to face the fact that physical rest is actually non-negotiable.
Why We Actually Need REst
You’ll all be shocked to learn, I’m sure, that I’m no longer allowed to tell Erin or Eleanor that I’m ‘fine.’
Our bodies demand rest, require us to stop and let it recover. Athletes know this, and I think we often ignore it for ourselves because we think “oh, but I’m not skating in a hockey game, so I can keep going, it’s no big deal.” I was on and off airplanes, in and out of strange beds, breathing different air, drinking different water–and all of those things require recovery time. I gave my body none.
So heed my warning, friends–your body needs you to fecking stop. Unless you have a thing for antibiotics, don’t make my mistakes. Build rest into your routine and reap the rewards for doing so.
