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Key points
- Daily rest time is an easy, practical way to reduce stress.
- A daily rest time feels almost as lovely as a vacation by a lake.
- The key to resting is deciding without guilt or “should” thoughts.
- Putting aside "should" thoughts is one of the great pleasures and sources of relief of the everyday vacation.
I take a little vacation every day. I go into my den at noon, lie down on my daybed with my phone, Kindle, and two small round foil-wrapped chocolates, and stay there, resting, reading, scrolling, and just generally hanging out until 1:30. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, and I can honestly say it has transformed my life.
I usually start by unwrapping and eating the chocolates while I read whatever novel I’m reading. Sometimes, I read the digital New York Times on my phone or play Spelling Bee in the Times and then move on to the novel. I never read anything I’m not drawn to, never read or do anything that even a small part of me doesn’t want to read or do.
After I read for a bit, I usually drift off to sleep for 20 minutes or a half hour. This is one of the two main purposes of my rest-time vacation—I need to nap a little, to wipe clean the blackboard of my mind so there will be room for whatever has to go there next—my own writing if I don’t have to work or someone else’s writing if I do. If I don’t sleep, I end up feeling cranky and a little overwhelmed for the rest of the day, but when I do sleep, no matter how badly I might have slept the night before, I feel refreshed and up for doing whatever’s next. I often fall asleep while I’m reading, and when I wake up, I don’t even know where I am or why. Is it morning? Am I in my bed? It takes a few seconds for reality to settle in.
The rest time is by far the best part of my day. I look forward to it every morning the way you might look forward to a little vacation in a cabin on a lake, and I feel a tiny bit of grief every day when it’s over. It took me a while to figure out what it is about it that I love so much. Yes, resting and recharging; yes, getting that little bit of restorative sleep. But even more than that, I realized, what I love is knowing that I have a good stretch of time when I don’t have to do anything, I don’t even have to think about anything. It’s that sense of freedom that I love, the feeling that this time belongs to me and nobody else, that I belong to myself.
There’s a Trappist monastery about 90 miles from where I live, and I’ve been taking short private retreats there for years, just me and a friend going up there and staying in separate rooms for one or two nights. I’ve always loved walking into the Spartan little room, closing the door behind me, and being alone. In the same way, I feel alone these days during my rest times. I used to crave those trips to the monastery, but the last time I was there, for two nights in November, I noticed it didn’t feel quite as wonderful as it used to, as urgently necessary to be there, and then I realized that was because I was getting more or less the same thing from having my rest times every day.
So, I’ve started thinking of my rest times as little vacations. I highly recommend taking them. Of course, I know it’s a privilege made possible by the fact that I work at home, I don’t have kids at home, and I control my own schedule. Still, it seems worth considering whether it’s possible to create your own little everyday vacation in some way.
The trick seems to be putting boundaries around a small chunk of time every day no matter what else is going on—writing that time into the schedule like any other commitment and not letting anything get in the way. I do it on the weekend when I don’t have anything particularly urgent happening, and I do it on weekdays when I’m as busy as I ever get. The other trick is making up my mind to do it without guilt or "should" thoughts. In fact, getting rid of the should thoughts, putting them aside or on hold or just simply ignoring them during the time, is one of the great pleasures and sources of relief of the everyday vacation.
April is National Stress Awareness Month, a designation created to bring attention to the negative impact of stress. As everyone knows, stress impacts us negatively in all sorts of ways, starting with health. It’s not always easy to know how to reduce stress, and I’m grateful to have hit upon an easy, practical way to do it. What better way can there be to reduce stress than to put it aside for a little while every day, to take a little vacation from the hectic pace and inner and outer struggles of life in the middle of every day?
