For the first time during a break, I have done nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have wasted away many hours playing video games. I have spent some free time writing. I have done whatever I felt, whenever I felt like it, helping out at home, talking, texting and playing video games.
I wanted to devote this winter break to rest. I have slept, a lot, eaten and spent time with my family and friends. I will be traveling with my family for the first time in a long time. I have gone out and socialized with people I haven’t seen in several years, and just gone to the gym to catch up on everything besides work.
I have a mountain of work to do once I come back from winter break as a teacher. I have half a semester’s papers to grade. I have an IEP to write for one of my students. I have to plan lessons, catch up on work for an online program, and that’s not even half of what I have to do for work.
Now would be a good time to catch up on all of these things. A younger version of myself would have seized the opportunity this holiday season and actually start to catch up. But I deliberately chose not to spend any time on work, and devote this break to rest. It feels unnatural not to work and not get any work-related thing done. I am not at very much peace with that reality.
And that means the break has gone as well as it possibly could right now. I devoted this time for reflection because I was worn out from the daily challenges and rigors of working with the kids and everything else that comes to work. That doesn’t mean that I don’t love my job or love my students — but the life of a first-year inner-city teacher is very, very exhausting. Half of the days I come home, I pass out on the bed right away, and resolve to “wake up when I wake up”. Luckily, on those days I don’t have to take care of or watch any kids like many of my colleagues and friends do.
The school year isn’t even halfway over. It’s a marathon much more than it is a sprint, and resting and reflecting are essential parts to that marathon. I would have crucified myself for saying this a year ago, but it’s okay to be unproductive.
I know that once I’m not home and back on my day-to-day routines and rituals, life is going to get hectic again. Work will drain me and take a lot out of me. But right now is my time to stop and not do anything, and many of my teacher friends are doing the same. That doesn’t mean we don’t think about everything we have to do, as I’m thinking about how behind I am on everything I have to do once I go back, but just that now isn’t the time to do it.
Rest and recovery are essential to keeping our monumental efforts sustainable. We buy into this bourgeois hustle culture that tells us we need to be working and being productive all the time. Think about the kinds of articles you read, the life hacks that say to do X to be more productive, articles that tell you to “use this technique to be happier”.
Why do we always need to hack life? Why can’t we be okay with where we are right now, and stop for a bit, before leaping into the next phase? Of course, being more at peace with our present conditions is easier said than done — but that starts with surrendering our need to be machines rather than human beings with needs, from the physiological to emotional. A time of rest is supposed to replenish those needs.
And here’s a newsflash: work is just a band-aid. A lot of us aren’t comfortable with vacation and having time off. We get antsy and agitated, worried about how much we aren’t getting done. But if we’re more comfortable at work than we are at home or on vacation, that’s indicative of a deeper problem in our own lives. There’s something that’s not normal at home that we’re using work to coping with, or we’re using being busy at work to distract ourselves from deep-seated problems.
That’s OK that work is a band-aid for so many of us. Life is messy and complicated. To be unproductive is defying not only hustle culture but whatever piece of us that says we need to be productive and working to be valuable. Validation and approval can come from a lot of places and be valuable, from home, faith, or friendships. Our performance at work, dictated often by numbers and results, are variable. A lot of factors outside our control go into whether our next report or evaluation will be good — so to have worked as the core of our identities is not healthy nor sustainable.
That doesn’t mean that work doesn’t matter, because we’re spending a large portion of our lives at work. Work can be one of the surrounding entities of our identity, but you need to take a deep look inward if work is your center and constant.
During this holiday season, remind yourself of the fact that work is just working. Now is one of the few times you might get to be free and spend time with family. Take some time, not only during the holidays, to do nothing and be unproductive, and you’ll thank yourself for it.
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Previously published on Medium.com.
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