i've been meaning to rest for about 3 years now...will it ever end?

Not dramatically. Not the kind of rest that requires a breakdown, a diagnosis, or a suspiciously expensive flight somewhere with better weather. Just the ordinary kind.The kind where you stop doing things for long enough that your body remembers what stopping actually feels like. I keep meaning to do it. Next week, when this project is finished. After the twins' birthday. After the review cycle at work. After I finish the essay I've been carrying around in my head for two weeks. After this particularly busy period ends and the next one, which I am confident will be much quieter, begins. The next one is never quieter. I know this. And yet I continue to behave as though the next calendar event will be the one that finally grants me permission to lie down. I think I have been treating rest like a reward I haven't quite earned yet. There is a very specific version of this that I recognise in myself, and I suspect a lot of us are doing some variation of it. The belief that rest is something you arrive at after sufficient output. That you have to earn the stillness. Justify the stop. Accumulate enough completed tasks before you are allowed to sit down without immediately wondering what you should be doing. Somewhere along the way, being exhausted became morally preferable to being unproductive. The belief is so embedded in how I move through my days that I only really notice it when I try to stop and the guilt arrives within approximately 14 seconds. I sit down and suddenly remember 3 emails I haven't answered. I lie on the sofa and my brain produces a list of household tasks with the efficiency of an Amazon warehouse. I take a day off and spend half of it feeling vaguely guilty for taking a day off. And then there is the phone,obviously. My hands genuinely do not seem to know what to do when they are not holding something that requires my attention. I will pick it up without even consciously deciding to, stare at it, scroll through absolutely nothing I care about,and then wonder why I am tired.Apparently I have been training myself to experience boredom as an emergency. I have been so consistently in motion for so long that stillness has started to feel like a problem I need to solve. The irony is that I write about this. Constantly. The optimised life with no room left for anything real. The busyness confused with aliveness. The life we keep postponing until we have dealt with everything else. I can articulate the argument beautifully. I can make a convincing case for slowing down. I can write 1,500 words about the psychological necessity of rest and then immediately open my laptop to'just quickly do one thing.' One thing is never one thing. There is something almost funny about it, if funny is the right word. The writer who keeps telling everyone to stop is still running around with a to-do list in her head. The essay about rest was probably written while avoiding resting. I am not standing outside the problem with a clipboard and some excellent advice. I am very much inside it, wearing comfortable clothes and pretending that checking one more email counts as productivity. I think I have been waiting to rest until I feel like I deserve it. Until the output is sufficient. Until the list is manageable. Until the house is sorted. Until work calms down. Until the children are less demanding. Until I have finished the thing. Until I have somehow completed being a person with responsibilities. Which is obviously a ridiculous standard because life is not going to send me a little notification saying:Congratulations! You have completed all known obligations. You may now rest. There will always be something. I do not have a resolution to offer here. No 5-step framework for reclaiming your rest. No 5am morning routine involving breathwork, journalling and a ceramic cup of something that costs £7.50. I have tried turning rest into a project before and, unsurprisingly, managed to become quite ambitious about it. I think I am beginning to suspect that the stopping does not have to be earned. That the body does not need to reach the point of collapse before it is allowed to be still. That rest is not the prize at the end of sufficient productivity but part of what makes productivity, creativity, patience and basically being a reasonably pleasant person possible in the first place. And maybe I don't need to be better at resting.Maybe I just need to stop making rest prove its worth. Three years is a long time to mean to rest. So I am going to try to do it before it becomes 4 No promises about the phone. Let's not get carried away. When did you last rest without immediately thinking about what you should be doing instead? And, more importantly, did you actually let yourself enjoy it? musings of a city girl ☕🍂 is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. xo, musingsofacitygirl — still spiraling, still observing, still surviving beautifully If you enjoyed this piece, check out my other posts below: