I see rest as synonymous with creating space for myself.
Opening space is the key; filling your time leaves your mind no room of its own. I am often guilty of feeding the dopamine machine with more instead of granting myself time to process — finishing one book and jumping straight into the next. This mind garden helps with that tendency, though doesn’t eliminate it entirely.
Phones (and, I’d argue, other digital technology, and social media in particular) have an abundant sense of restlessness—I feel as if I am scurrying from one notification to the next like a hunted animal, one item in the feed, after another, after another, never stopping or lingering. Never resting. The word says it: restless, as in, without rest. The technology consumes all the in-between moments, all the seconds where you might close your eyes, stare out a window, sigh loudly. Wonder if a timer is moving or stuck.
In this way, smartphones consume rest.
I got a Time Timer and did the exact same thing, except I thought it was broken 😂
[I]f you feel anxious or worried about progress on personal projects, don’t feel that you have to continue.
👏 A good reminder that personal projects are not obligations, and sometimes quitting a project is the right choice.
Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace of work –– feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its virtuous benefit. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.
From the founder and creator of The Nap Ministry, Rest Is Resistance is a battle cry, a guidebook, a map for a movement, and a field guide for the weary and hopeful. It is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey’s lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action and manifesto for those who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.
As someone who’s experienced burnout and still struggles with letting go of perfectionism and productivity, I was on board with a lot of this.
It’s interesting to think of rest as inherently valuable, not valuable by virtue of letting us feel rested — as an activity in itself, unnecessary to be justified by the outcome we produce from it. I fall into this thinking trap sometimes, of framing my breaks in terms of making me more effective and productive rather than part of life and a right to which I’m entitled.
Much of the book is repetitive — but that is intentional, as she frames herself the Nap Minister and approaches the book as a secular (theoretically) sermon, drawing on oral culture’s use of repetition to drive points home emotionally.
Her approach is rooted in religious beliefs and the text is supposedly secular, but steeped in spiritual language that can be a lot to wade through if you aren’t spiritual. She is dismissive of anyone who is not spiritual, claiming that capitalism and grind culture have separated us from our innate spirituality 🙄 We cannot rest because we are not spiritual. Thanks for the judgment lady. I almost quit at 75% because I don’t feel the need to be insulted but ultimately pushed through.
Unfortunately, she relied on spirituality as her justification for why humans deserve rest: because they are divine and their existence is a miracle 🙄 This feels like an oversight and missed opportunity to dig into this more. Relying on unexplained claims that depend on specific spiritual beliefs is not very convincing. Her explanation of the Dream Space also needed more, in my opinion.
She also claims it is necessary to “detox” from technology completely to be able to rest. I understand her stance on social media being an expression of Grind Culture, but I feel demanding a complete removal of technology is dismissive of those for whom technology is a connector of community — disabled people, anyone living in an area where they are out of place ideologically, anyone who does not have the opportunity to form local in-person community.
I realize this is all a bit dramatic. But isn’t that the goal of the Ghosts’ visitations? They’re always over-the-top. If their aim was to make me pause and take stock of my choices, they had succeeded.
I’m giving myself permission to work more slowly than I’m used to…
Me too. But it’s so hard to be patient! 😂😭
Reimena Yee (blog.reimenayee.com)All of this waiting is necessary because the act of doing nothing is essential. The soil needs to rest so its nutrients can restore itself. The sea needs time for the fish to spawn…
Ripeness: there comes a time when the work writes itself, freely, in the depths of the author’s soul, and before the author has even dared to make that work manifest. The creator must respect the gestation period, if he knows how to wait, the strongest plant, the one that withstood the elements, will spring strongly into life.
— Paolo Coelho
Lawrence Yeo (moretothat.com)[R]est is when you’re not associating your self-worth with what you have to do next.
Four hours of writing two days in a row, and I’m feeling it today! I slogged through a rough 650 word session early this afternoon, and kept putting off doing a second session through the afternoon and early evening. Finally I got back on after dinner and hammered through another thousand words, which felt much easier. I’m calling it good with only two and a quarter hours today — I met minimum word count, even if not 70k word count 😉
You know how they say don’t start running by running a 5k every day? NaNo is that for writing.* But at least you’re doing it alongside thousands of others 🏃♀️🏃♂️🏃♀️
I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again,** but breaking my brain back into intense daily writing is absolutely training. Writing is a heavy brain-draw, and even with building up my work endurance during Preptober, I have to adjust to go from writing nothing to writing two thousand words a day. It’s a balance of listening to my body and recognizing when I need rest and when it’s just resistance. Today was a little of both. (And I’m sure it didn’t help that I slept kinda crappy last night. NaNo is an important time to take care of your body!)
* There are some things about NaNo that I think are great for new writers, but I also sometimes worry that it’s harmful to people who it doesn’t work for. I don’t want people to feel bad and quit writing if the binge approach isn’t for them. (There’s probably something toxic “suffering for your art” mentality in this style of just do it.) There would be something to be said for stretching it out over a longer time period and starting with writing a sentence, then a paragraph, then a page, and working up to 2k words a day. Frankly, that would be a much healthier approach to building a healthy writing habit than NaNo, which is something that I (and many of my writing friends) have struggled with over the years. Hmmm…. Page Zero to 2k 🤔 I think this is actually a good idea…. that I really don’t have time for 😂
** Depending how this month goes, in the future I may be trying to work more intensive writing into my life throughout the year, rather than during one annual marathon.
The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.
Please remember that fascism is relentless by design.
It is not an accident that the bad news is relentless.
They want you to burn out. They want you so tired and sad you never show up to protest them.
Rest is resistance.
Don’t let exhaustion do you in.