When did rest become something I have to fight for?

A full life is a good one but where does rest fit in?

Pulling my blanket higher and shifting cushions into place, I flipped open a new book.

I’ve been in a reading slump for 3 months, so I decided to pause Crime and Punishment and slip into Evocation (love a good fantasy novel!) to hopefully kick my reading back into gear. After about 20 pages, I felt my attention slipping from me. A restlessness gripped me as my eyes scanned the room looking for something—anything—that needed my attention. I reached for my phone, hovering my thumb over Instagram, and then retracted my hand just as quick.

Trying to dive back into the novel, I see all the elements that should be keeping me there. Dark magical occult, a strong witch named Moira with psychic abilities, a love triangle that’s impossible to ignore—the make up of a fun story. My eyes skittered across the page and then off it.

Did I look through my planner this morning before I decided to take the day off?

I shook my head, shifted the blankets, and continued on the next page following Moira into the depths of a haunted house. At the end of the chapter I flipped to the back to do a page count. Guilt seeped in as I flipped back to my page to see where Moira goes next. Her relationship is feeling a little on edge but will she choose to keep growing her magic or fall back to connect with her husband? Time would tell but would I give it the time it required?

As I moved through a few more cycles of fighting my attention deficit I started tapping my feet.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

I catch the nervous tick and stop. Being (somewhat) self aware is a funny thing—sometimes I’m just sitting there watching myself fail, getting frustrated that I’m not doing anything about it yet not having the will power to change anything. I keep fighting the urge to move to my desk and pull up Notion to see if I had missed anything.

When was that one deadline again?

Did I tell my manager to move that Monday meeting?

Do I have enough buffer time to finish both those projects this month?

The resistance buzzes in my veins like the feeling of trying to push opposing magnets together. Except the magnets are my butt and this couch. It’s the weekend, I remind myself. Let it be the weekend.

I keep pushing because that’s what I’m good at. I forced myself through one more page. Then another. Then a chapter. 100 pages in and my brain finally quieted. Moira is teaming up with her husband’s ex and I’m there with them. A few hours later I looked up and the book was finished.

I’d won. I took a weekend day off and finished a book.

But why did it have to be a fight?

Somewhere in my twenties weekends became rare for me. Without knowing, I stopped seeing weekends as “time off” and started thinking of them “extra time”—to be productive, work on projects, and tackle my to-do list. Even now, as I try to enter a new era of life, one where I don’t overwork and do set more boundaries, my weekend schedule is dictated by how much anxiety my to-do list is currently bringing me.

In therapy last week I realized that my 20-minute ramble was telling both my therapist and me that I’ve become stressed about being stressed. When I quit my tech job last year to pursue a creative business full-time, I quickly learned that my idea of “stability” was heavily tied to my job and my salary. When the title was stripped away I was left scrambling trying to figure out where I fit in the world. It created a feeling of scarcity both financially and in my self-worth. In an effort to regain my footing in those two areas, I threw myself into work even harder than before. The result was heavy burnout, severe acne, isolation from friends and family, and an expansion of distance in my relationship¹.

A year later, my relationship ended and I started to heal. During that period I finally started to untangle the web of emotions that calcified and had been sitting, taking up space. When I was reflecting on the shit show of the past year, I saw a singular red-handed culprit—stress. In that moment I was filled with anger, shame, guilt, and most of all fear. If this was the reason for all the turmoil, then I better start running in the opposite direction.

So I tried to be someone different. Someone who called her mom regularly. Who said yes to friend hangs. Who had hobbies. Who was interesting. Who did things outside of work. I’d neglected all of that in my scramble for stability, and I was convinced that neglect was why my relationship ended.

So my calendar filled: coffee dates, workout classes, dinner with friends. I was determined to be the kind of person who had a life outside of work.

What I didn’t realize was that I’d just replaced one kind of busy with another. I wasn’t resting—I was performing a different version of productivity. And in trying to avoid becoming the person who only worked, I’d left no room to just…be. Empty time started to feel dangerous. If I didn’t fill it with something “good”, I’d default to work. So I filled it.

I developed an adverse reaction to boredom.

Boredom can be defined as an aversive state of being that results from a lack of interest, stimulation, meaning, or challenge which then translates to feelings of emptiness, restlessness, and weariness. We enter a state of boredom if something fails to capture our attention. Or when we feel like whatever we’re doing is meaningless². It explains why picking up our phones doesn’t actually solve for boredom: it may grab our attention (and keep it) but the meaningless act doesn’t fulfill us otherwise. On the contrary, it triggers a feeling of guilt which keeps us in that avoidant loop that started when we reached for our phone in the first place.

This left me wondering why things I used to fight to do—reading, writing, knitting—now trigger a sense of boredom. Is it really the activity that feels boring? Or have I trained myself to see anything that doesn’t feel productive as a waste of time? Do I now see doing things for myself as meaningless?

Here’s the irony: I quit my job to have more freedom. To build a life that felt like mine. Instead I made a life so full there’s no room left for me in it. I’m not sure when rest became something I have to earn. Or when doing nothing became something I have to fight for.

What I do know is that I don’t want to be stressed about being stressed anymore.

Maybe a bit of boredom would do me good.

1. While I do believe in taking accountability for the part I played in my break up, it does take two to tango. So I’d like to give myself some grace here and say that the distance was already far and wide before I expanded it.

2. Erin Westgate, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Florida, wrote an interesting paper on “Why Boredom is Interesting.” It’s worth checking out if you’re feeling the same.