Dear friends,
I am resting this month. After a busy spring, a hectic summer and a fantastic twelve hour Sketchathon last week, I definitely need some rest!
But every time I commit to resting my mind starts spinning: Rest is sooo boring … I can’t rest while everyone’s still working … I want to finish those sketches I planned and what about all those cool projects … (and two cups of coffee later) … I will rest later. Does that happen to you?
Friends, this is not healthy or sustainable. We really need to up our rest game! Here are the solutions I am going to practice this month. I would love it if you would practice resting with me:
BUILD “QUIET TIME” INTO YOUR DAY
When my boys were toddlers, we switched them from naps to “Quiet Time” or screen-free time for peaceful, sustained, independent play like building legos or drawing or sorting a crate of Pokemon cards.
My adult quiet time is usually sketching or reading. When I sketch, I fall into a flow state, my brain focuses on the object I’m sketching and I rest. After thirty minutes of sketching I definitely feel more relaxed than thirty minutes of instagram scrolling.
I also love reading books with actual paper pages because I’m not tempted to “just check that weather app” or “send my cousin the electronic birthday card I forgot to send last week”. That’s not resting. That’s multitasking and multitasking is exhausting. For tips on starting a quiet time ritual for yourself and your kids, check out this great blog post.
ADD SOME RESTRICTIONS
Our bodies need rest and our minds need rest too! How can we rest our minds? Restriction is a great way! Why? Because we suffer from Decision Fatigue - which builds up every time we have to make a choice and the stakes feel high and we do it all-day-long. Making decisions is depleting.
So I restrict my choices all the time to give my brain a break:
Tuesday is Taco Night!
You can only paint with these three colors today
I have a capsule wardrobe of just 15 pieces of clothing
All of these restrictions (and many others) help me reduce decision fatigue and rest my brain.
PRACTICE LOITERING
Finally, I am learning to loiter this month! The poet Ross Gay introduced me to the wonders of lolligaging and laziness in his wonderful poem “Loitering.” You should Listen and Learn to Loiter from Ross Gay too!
Once you know how to loiter, you will have to practice giving yourself permission to loiter. Actually, I think this is the hard part because we have such shame triggers around laziness in our culture. But if we persevere and practice we can get the hang of lingering and lounging this month. Then we will be all rested and ready to start learning in September!
