Should rest be productive?

I'm not sure that's the point

Hi,

I’m having a slow August. The words are not forthcoming. Ideas half-form and then disintegrate as soon as I try to grasp them. The campaigning energy I had for the first half of this year seems to have evaporated off into the sun. I stare at this laptop and wonder where my brain is.

Rationally, of course, I know there is no pressure to create. I’ve done a lot of work this year - much of it emotionally taxing - and it’s ok to slow down. It’ll only ramp up again in September. And it’s hot and still and everyone’s away; really it’s the ideal time to have a break. I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll have a day off, but then tomorrow comes and I spend the whole day at my desk, failing to get anything done.

I am, as ever, suspended between what I feel and what I know. I want to be useful to my community, and I am somehow convinced that I can only be so when I am writing. But I know that this need to be productive is itself deeply unhelpful to that same community, and that I’d probably do more good by modelling rest.

In disability circles, we like to say that rest is productive. Of course, that’s true. Rest is what allows us to get up and go again and, at least for creatives, allows the space to have new ideas.

And yet I wonder if this framing is part of the problem. Why should rest be productive? Can we not rest unproductively? Isn’t the point of rest to not be productive at all? And am I being my own worst enemy for only giving myself permission to rest because doing so might help someone else? And this is before you even begin to unpack my compulsive need to be useful.

Here’s the problem with rest always being productive: it creates the pressure to do it well. For me, one of the best ways to restore my mind while letting my body recuperate is to read. I love reading. But for the first half of this year, almost everything I read was… about disability. And look, they were brilliant books. But it did mean that when I said I was resting I was, in fact, working. This was also true every time I opened something about ableism on my phone while watching TV or answered a DM from a stranger asking for advice as I got into bed. Unsurprisingly, I was increasingly knackered.

I’ve belatedly realised that this stuff needs to be done in working hours (knowing it and doing it are two separate things, ok?). And I have realised that I need to enjoy non-productive things and ways of resting. I have a stack of unread disability-related books, but right now they are remaining closed while I am savouring a Rebecca Solnit collection and feeling vaguely restored every time I open it (I am also, finally, watching Mad Men).

I have also accepted, for now, that I do find being completely unproductive quite stressful. It’s going to take a while for that to change. I also know that I need to reset a bit. So rather than berating myself for failing to chill out properly, I am instead trying to find a happy middle ground. For me, this looks like writing when I have something to write, but not spending aimless hours at the laptop, waiting for an idea (or, more often, an email) when I could be doing other, non-work things. I’m trying to occupy the space between working and not working, writing and not writing, without the pressure those extremes usually bring.

I’m hoping to keep it up, at least until the chaos (also known as Parliament) returns in the autumn.

Speak soon,
Lucy