Rhena Writes

Author: Rhena

  • The paradox of productivity.

    Daily writing prompt
    When do you feel most productive?
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    I unexpectedly felt productive this weekend. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I came upon a farm stand and I went right to work. I harvested corn (stacked it hight on my back) which I quickly fed to the chickens. The chickens promptly began laying eggs, which I collected and boxed for the long line of waiting customers. In spite of the clearly laid out blinking arrows directing me to each task, I soon fell behind trying to keep up with the harvesting, egg collecting and packaging and sales. Fortunately, the customers were all paying cash and within minutes I had several large green stacks. I used these to hire workers and soon I had a tractor and a driver. Every so often, my productivity was disrupted by my Norwegian language lessons, but I was soon back at the farm stand, which continued to grow and grow until was selling not just eggs but also produce and milk and had multiple stands and employees. “Productive” is an understatement!

    Of course, the key word (to me anyway) is feel. When do you feel productive? This “productivity” was all in an advertisement between lessons on the free language learning app that I tried to dig into this weekend. I was surprised by how quickly and thoroughly I got roped into this game that popped up on my screen each time I finished another level of the owlish app. I shouldn’t have been. Of course these apps tap right into the ways our brains crave feeling productive. The labor was decidedly easy (it was just a matter of dragging your finger across the screen, after all) especially when compared to the real backbreaking and dangerous work of actual farming. No bird flu around these pixels! And the stacks of money piled up with barely any effort at all — to the point that there was money that had fallen to the ground on the way to various tasks. And the game grew quickly enough to keep me curious about what would happen next. Gee: farming is so easy! Even an urban denizen like me can quickly become a land baron.

    I had to consciously make the decision that I wasn’t going to pick up my phone again. I’d figure out another way to learn Norwegian.

    Now. Paradoxically, the time that I am actually most productive is when I am lying on the couch doing nothing. Rest does not need to be earned. It is a right. And every time I rest and let my mind wander and imagine, I am taking care of myself. Every time I tune into my breath and my body, I am listening to my most basic elemental needs. This is the most productive I cannot just feel, but actually be.

  • The shrug emoji is my fave

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your favorite emojis?
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    There was a time that I convinced myself that emojis were not an effective way to communicate. Yeah. I was probably a bit of a snob. More than a bit. I believed that complete words were more effective. I was awfully precious about the power of written language. But also I felt I owed the world and everyone in it. (Well, except myself.) Text me a question or thought? I’m going to respond. And I’m going to respond thoroughly and completely. I’m going to consider every single eventuality and variation embedded in the question and my response. It was exhausting.

    It’s not that I use emojis all the time now but I’ve come to appreciate them. It’s probably the influence of my kids. It’s hard to hate on anything that brings them so much joy. Parenthood changes a person. Or at least it changed me.

    Back to the shrug emoji. Maybe I like it because I’m Gen X. We’ve always been characterized as the aloof, apathetic generation. And maybe my love of the shrug is born of that. If it is that, there’s an element of “giving them what they want” in my usage of it. In other words you (the older generation) characterized us as being apathetic, so that’s what I’m going to give you. I’m not going to waste my time trying to convince you that I and my entire generation are more than what you’ve reduced us to. Instead, I’m going to enjoy simply being. I have nothing to prove to you. And if you interpret that as apathy, so be it. There’s nothing to be done about that.

    The shrug is more than just apathy anyway. I had the realization recently that there’s immense power in the words, “I don’t know.” I used to feel like I had to be everything to everyone. I had to always know the answers. I had to have the right words at all times. The shrug absolves me of all of that in the same way that “I don’t know” does. I’ve taken to just saying those words, even in response to questions as seemingly basic as, “how do you feel?” I’ve absolved myself of always having to have a response to that question. To all questions, in fact. I think that this kind of behavior is sometimes called “stonewalling” and it may be considered, in some circles, anti-social. And if me centering myself above the questioning of others is anti social, then so be it.

    In other words: 🤷🏻‍♀️

  • Fave discussion topic: me, myself, and I.

    Daily writing prompt
    What topics do you like to discuss?
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    I used to pretend that I didn’t like to talk about myself. It seemed, at the time, more polite. I’d act like I enjoyed talking about the other person, politics, the news, art, books, science, whatever topic the other person was interested in. I’m very good at listening very intently — or at least giving the appearance of doing as much — and asking all the questions to keep the conversation going towards the other person.

    I can see now that that was all an act. At the time, I truly thought that was who I was: someone able to hold everyone else’s stories and interests. The truth is that I was carving out bits and pieces of myself to make room for everyone else. The end result is that I reached middle age barely knowing myself.

    They say it’s better late than never. And honestly, I think I started to realize this just in time. Somewhere inside of me, there’s a little spark of myself, my true self, not the mask, not the illusion I created to please everyone else. But a spark is all that’s needed to create a flame and then a fire. And so I add some dry kindling (paper will do for these early stages) and blow gently. For now, even the exhalation of breath through my nose is enough. But soon, I will purse my lips and pull from deep within my lungs. I’ll push out air and form words through my throat, my tongue and teeth. These will join together to sentences and paragraphs. And each one is part of me. And the spark will become a flame and soon a fire, fed by my own care and nurturing of myself. I will discuss myself and in doing so, I will also grow myself, the same self that I unwittingly dismissed in favor of something else, outside of me, for all those years.

    And the flame is me and it grows stronger each time I speak of myself to myself. And is soon able to consume and enjoy any topic, relating it all back to myself which grows stronger and takes up more and more space. Expansive. Steady. Whole.

  • Right now. This is a risk.

    Daily writing prompt
    When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
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    Every time I write, whether it’s pen to paper or hands to keyboard, I’m taking a risk. I know. It doesn’t seem like it. I’m sitting in the comfort of my own house. I’m doing something (writing) I’ve been doing every day for the last month and which I’ve been studying for much, much longer. It should be easy, right? Low-risk? Safe even?

    Nope.

    It’s time and energy towards something that’s seemingly frivolous. What if I’m misunderstood? What if I run out of ideas? What if the creativity spring runs dry? What if I wasted it all on this one post? What if the time I’m taking towards doing this would be better off spent raising chickens or cleaning my kitchen? What if a meteor hits my house right as I’m sitting here? What if I develop carpal tunnel syndrome from all this typing?

    What if I die a Taurus? What if I die on purpose?
    What if it wasn’t even worth it? What if I’m walkin’ alone?
    What if I choke on this Slurpee? What if I make it big?
    What if my car exploded
    While I’m casually pumping the gas and smokin’ a cig?
    What if my life was loaded?     (Lyrics from Doechii’s Stanka Pooh)

    It’s putting myself, my thoughts, ideas words, images out there. Judgement and ridicule waiting just around each corner. Or they could just collapse out there in the world, unseen, unknown, unrecognized?

    But there are worse things. Like what?

    Playing it safe. I could just go clean the kitchen. I could just stand up from this desk and, well, quite literally do any number of other things: go for a walk, read, drive to the beach, buy a plane ticket to the Maldives, take a nap on the couch, blow dandelion seeds, steal a car, etc… And, yes, all of those have risks involved.

    I could do what I was doing before, the low-risk, safe option: writing and submitting that writing for someone else (a publisher or editor or judge) to “approve” my writing, to decide it was worthy of publication. But in the end, that “safe” option was much more damaging to me, to my emotional health. I allowed each rejection to be a blow to my self image, my self worth. I let them dim my light.

    Finally, I decided to stop playing it safe, to stop asking for approval from other people, and to start saying “yes” to myself. I started this blog. Each time I hit publish, it’s a risk. Someone could “steal” my words or twist my ideas. I have just enough experience in the world to know that there are ways in which what I publish here could be used against me. But I don’t spend too much time thinking about that, doing risk assessments, or trying to protect myself and keep everything one hundred percent safe. If I did that, I’d be trapped in an endless cycle of perfectionism, double checking, making sure I was pleasing everyone else all the time. I know where that cycle kept me: in silence.

    Instead, what I do is I trust. I trust the source of my creativity, I trust my lived experiences and, above all else, I trust myself. I breath. And I smash that button: publish.

  • The risks of living and writing.

    Daily writing prompt
    Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.
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    I do not regret anything that was a risk. The only things that I do regret are the decisions I made that involved no risk at all, that were the easy or the safe way to go. I wrote yesterday about one of my more obvious regrets that involved very little risk: attending an MFA in creative writing. The bigger risk would have been to trust myself and go it “alone” without the so-called support of a large institution.

    This followed on the heels of a different risk that I took that I do not regret: volunteering as a teacher in Karenni Refugee Camp on the Thai-Burma border. I’ve written a bit about my experiences there here and here.

    Some of the reasons why it was a risk was that it wasn’t strictly legal for non-refugees to be living there. And the job didn’t really come with the dressings of a job in the west: a contract, insurance, union rep, HR, running water, etc…. I wouldn’t really leave with references for my next job.

    Today, I’m still trying to sort out how I can write about my time there, how the risks involved barely register now compared to how I grew from being there. I wrote my whole creative writing thesis on the topic of my time there and some history of Karenni people. And I’ve tried to shop that writing around a bit. I’ve written a few things (here) about it that have been published.

    Ironically, I think that the in moving and teaching in the camp, I took the bigger risk and I have no regrets about it. Even though I was often “confined” to my house (concerns that the refugees would get in trouble with local authorities for “harboring” a foreigner), I felt a great expansiveness and even freedom. I felt that I could be present to myself in those moments. It was trying to return to the states and live more safely that I regret. “Safe” means small, narrow, confined. In the camp, I wrote on occasion, but not nearly as much as I did when I returned to the States and entered my MFA program. The difference was that my writing in the camp was just for myself. There was no judgement involved, just expression. Not so when I was studying writing.

    I hope that in this blog, I find more ways to write about my time in Thailand and specifically in the refugee camp in ways that feel expansive and freeing and, yes, maybe even a little risky. No. A lot risky.

  • Read, Write, Redefine

    Daily writing prompt
    Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
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    I wish that twenty years ago, I had decided to read, write, and redefine on my own rather than going to an MFA program in creative writing.

    I learned recently that James Baldwin read through an entire library on his way to becoming the writer that he became. I wish I had done something similar. I certainly read a lot during my time in the creative writing program, sometimes as many as five books a week. But these were chosen by professors and instructors who were already, more or less, part of the literati. There were few women writers that we read. There were even fewer writers of color. For me, I was reading for the class I was in, to pass or, sometimes, to try to “impress” the instructor. I wish I had been reading for myself. I grew so used to reading for classes that once I was done with my MFA, it was many years before I started to read for pleasure. Even now, I sometimes have the thought while I’m reading that I’ll have to summarize or answer questions about it or respond to the writing in some way that will be acceptable to an instructor. I have to remind myself that I’m reading for only one person now: me.

    A similar thing happened to me with regard to my writing in my MFA program. All of the writing I was doing was for an audience outside of myself. I spent a lot of time and energy on trying to get it “right” and almost no time exploring, having fun, thinking my own thoughts. I was fixated on being a “good” writer, on receiving praise so that I never focused on what my writing was and was not doing for me. (Praise that I was never going to get.)

    At the time, I fell for the idea that I needed an MFA in order to write, in order to be “successful” and in order to have a community of writers. I thought that the degree would be a stamp of approval that would open up the world of writing and publishing. In other words, I’d fallen for an elitist way of thinking: hook, line, and sinker. I worked while I was in the program (three research fellowships) in exchange for tuition reduction. This was less time on my own writing. I spent hours and hours each work reading and responding to my classmate’s work. This, too, was time away from my own writing. And, honestly, it sometimes feels like that sort of workshop set up is actually just having students doing the professor’s work. I rarely received feedback from instructors that was truly, well, instructive. Each of them seemed to have an image in their minds of what was “good” writing and I either wrote towards that, earning accolades by the second or third submission when I’d decoded what they were looking for or, well, not.

    For one of my admissions essays I wrote, in all my earnestness, that I was looking for a “community” of writers. I didn’t realize that this was just me parroting what MFA programs claim to not only offer but exclusively so. I truly believed that these elite institutions were the only place that I could get support in my creativity. How naive! I’m sitting now, at my desk, with music on my phone, a scented candle lit, the sunlight hitting a handmade vase of flowers just so, the breeze playing with the grass and shadows playing with the outside my window. And all those many years ago, I thought that I had to climb into an ivory tower in order to access a creative community and the support I thought needed. Like I said: naive.

    So the last action I wish I had taken was: redefine. What do I wish I had redefined twenty years ago? Success, community, expression, support, reading, and, perhaps most of all, writing. I wish I had sat a minute and thought about what I really wanted and needed and that I had had the courage at the time to just give those things to myself rather than looking outwards to these institutions to give them to me. Well, here’s to hoping that it’s not too late to give those things to myself now.

  • Running piglets and cancer

    Daily writing prompt
    What makes you nervous?
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    Looking back to how I was before I had cancer, I would say that what made me nervous was everything. What makes me nervous a year post diagnosis? Nothing. 

    That answer is obviously too absolute for reality. But it’s a starting point. 

    I first learned the phrase “running piglet” from the book Chinese Medicine for the Mind: A Science-Backed Guide to Improving Mental Health with Traditional Chinese Medicine by Nina Cheng. “Running piglet defines a sudden rushing sensation that ascends to the chest and throat and a panicky feeling.” (P.89.) This very clearly describes how I experience nervousness or anxiety. The book even has an illustration of a distressed person with three yellow piglets in their stomach, ready to scamper upwards and into a pink trail leading up to the throat at any moment. I find this image to be very helpful in that it both contradicts the idea that nervousness is “all in my head” but also that it makes it seem so concrete and innocuous. I have little piglets running in my gut. I can deal with that. It was also a comfort to know that Chinese Medicine had a phrase and image that directly described what I was feeling. Meaning, in other words, that it was common enough to merit such a phrase. My chi might have been as chaotic as porcine babies  but at least I wasn’t the only one. 

    Perhaps if I lived in China, I would have visited an herbalist to help me getting my chi under control. But here, in the United States, instead, I got cancer. I know that this is a scientifically inaccurate way of looking at what’s happened to me over the last year. But I’m a writer, not a scientist. And I’m a human. I’ve needed to find the story that would best bring wholeness and unity to my person: body, mind and soul. So here it is. 

    Those little pigs were trauma and nerves and unexpressed, well, everything that I had been living with. They’d been gathering in my stomach over many decades. From time to time, I’d be able to settle and quiet them by getting them drunk, or overfeeding them, or distracting them in myriad ways like overworking or overworrying. But the little pigs were still there, unexpressed, unacknowledged and just aching at the chance to run all through my body, disrupting the flow and balance of my chi. 

    In the western scientific way of thinking about cancer, it’s considered a disfunction of the body. My cells were growing out of control. Somehow my genes were expressing themselves poorly or incorrectly. Which, honestly, shouldn’t come as a surprise in a western world where honest self expression and communication is discouraged. I know I’ve often felt disconnected from my body. I am not I’m getting anything particularly bold or unknown when I say that women’s bodies (and specifically Asian women’s bodies and biracial bodies) are continuously objectified in our culture. It takes its toll on us mentally and physically. 

    But you know what is also true underneath all of that surface-level objectification and mistrust of the human body? My body is incredible. My mind had been completely cut off from understanding my body and yet it still managed to take care of itself. To take care of me. 

    The cancer was my body, after all. 

    My body was creating cancer cells to mop up all those running pigs that were disrupting my chi and balance and life. All that trauma and unexpressed emotion had been running rampant for too long and my body had enough. The cancer gathered it all up and dumped it into my breast. Why there? One of the first things I said after my diagnosis was, “at least I’m done with using my breasts.” I’d already used them to nurse my babies. It’s not coincidence that my breasts have always been the most objectified part of my body. 

    When I first had my mastectomy (which was unilateral), I spent a fair amount of time thinking about how I would look with only one breast. I had already made the decision that I didn’t want to have reconstruction. More surgery and then the maintenance involved just seemed like, well, a lot to deal with. I did end up buying a few tops and a bathing suit that would de-emphasize the lopsidedness of my chest. And I’m still not one hundred percent happy with my bra situation. (I was offered to go to get fitted for a prosthetic but I wasn’t interested.) Still, I was kind of fiddling around with what shirts to wear. But the more I looked in the mirror and got used to how I look with one breast, the less and less concerned about it I’ve been. I realized that what was going on what that I was considering things like what top to wear to de-emphasize my lopsidedness because I was concerned that my body might make other people uncomfortable. Imagine that? I just went through one of the toughest years of my life, and I’m STILL overly fixated on what my body does to other people. Dang. Such is the power of misogyny. Fortunately, as soon as I realized that this was part of my thinking, I was able to shift it. Because the truth is: I’m a total badass and I have the scars and body to show it. 

    There are other aspects of cancer that have helped me cope with nervousness over the past year. Leading up to my surgery, I was very anxious and nervous. By going through it, though, I learned to ways to deal with that. Talk about it. Write through it. Return to focusing on my breath. I gained a mantra coming out of surgery: I am alive. And perhaps most of all, I learned the incredible power of my body and that I can trust it to take care of me. I’d long thought that the mind-body relationship was unidirectional, with the mind controlling the body. I woke up from surgery marveling that it’s a two-way street. 

    So am I really done with being nervous? Of course not. Each emotion along the whole spectrum serves its purpose. Just yesterday, the piglets woke in my belly as I watched my son run precariously close to the edge of the water at the Baltimore Harbor. But the sound of my voice calling his name lulled them back to sleep. se to the edge of the water at the Baltimore Harbor. But the sound of my voice calling his name lulled them back to sleep. 

    **********

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • I do my very best.

    Daily writing prompt
    How do you unwind after a demanding day?
    View all responses

    I try to not get wound up in the first place. Sometimes this means recognizing what I can and cannot control. It means that I try to have touch-points through the day when I can check in with myself.

    When I am getting wound up, I try to figure out a way to unwind myself as soon as possible. How? Moving, breathing, creating, eating, resting. I might go for a walk or just stretch a little, dance or shake it out. Check in with my breath. Sometimes I write in my journal. Practice the guitar. Listen to some music. Light a candle. Read a book or a poem.

    I recognize that it’s not the day that’s demanding, it’s myself that’s demanding of me. The demands I make of myself are completely in my control.

    I affirm myself. In every moment, every day, I’m one hundred percent confident that I did my very best because that’s what I tell myself. I have various phrases that I can go to if I’m having a hard time unwinding. I am alive. I am human. One I learned from Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley: I am no one’s savior. I am no one’s burden.

    Yesterday, I had various activities outside of the house. It might be have been a day that could be considered demanding. In the past, I likely would have come home and spent the evening fixating on how I did through the day and likely judging myself not too kindly. Maybe I was late arriving at different places. Maybe I didn’t get enough exercise. Maybe I was too chatty or not chatty enough; too helpful or not helpful enough. Oh! I shouldn’t have said that. Or maybe I should have said this. That person probably thinks I’m unkind or weird. I didn’t get enough reading done or clean the kitchen. With each thought, I’d wind myself up tighter and tighter.

    Instead, I wrote in my journal that I was really proud of myself for doing my best. And it’s true.

  • Is this what alignment feels like?

    Daily writing prompt
    How do you use social media?
    View all responses

    I’ve been responding to the daily writing prompt every day for about the last month or so. It hasn’t be a goal that I set, but it has played nicely into my larger goal of getting to one hundred posts. The daily prompts have gotten me into a nice rhythm of daily writing and posting, which I value and enjoy. Most days, I check the prompt in the first half of the day and then write my response later on. It being Easter, today has already felt like a full day. We spent most of the morning at my parents’ place for an egg hunt and lunch. I didn’t have the chance to check the question. And as we arrived home, I was having the internal debate, “do I want to post to the blog today?” It’s Sunday and even God rested. I was already pretty tired and wanted a nap.

    Well, turns out that all of these things are possible.

    I checked the daily prompt and saw that it was on a topic that I’d already posted about. No choice needed to be made! I promptly fell asleep on the couch and hopped on the computer once I woke up.

    Yesterday, I posted about rest. One of the things that I’ve realized is that when I’m doing something that I enjoy, it feels restful, even if it’s active. When I used to have to write for a deadline or for an assignment or for someone else or for money, it didn’t feel restful. I didn’t enjoy it. I was tense. It was draining. And so, for a long time, I believed that writing was something that exhausted me. It wasn’t the writing, it was the context, the subject matter, the lack of control and freedom. When writing is something that I choose, I find it energizing. And it turns out that the universe (or maybe at least word press) is in agreement. It sent me a daily prompt that I’d already answered, after all.

    So what does this have to do with social media? My previous post that I mentioned about was about how I took an indefinite time-out from social media. It ended up being a difficult sacrifice to make, but it was definitely the right choice. The daily prompt asks “How do you use social media?” “Use” is an important thing here. I don’t think I was using social media back when I was on it. I was allowing myself to be used by it. I wasn’t very active. I would scroll and scroll and rarely, if ever, would I create anything. I was very passive. Surprisingly, this also wasn’t restful. In fact, my brain was over-stimulating. Maybe one day I’ll have a reason to return to social media. If I do, I’m going to use it, not be used by it. It turns out that, for me, consuming is exhausting, and creating is energizing.

    ******************

    Here’s the text from my blog post about not using social media anymore, in case you don’t want to click through:

    I deleted Facebook years ago and Twitter a few after that. A few weeks ago, I the last of my social media apps: the mostly image-based Instagram and their partner text-based Threads. Social media, the whole of the internet, is, I believe, mostly a gift to the world. But my brain, my whole person was formed before the internet, much less social media, existed. In other words, I’m not equipped for handling it. My mind simply doesn’t move fast enough to keep up and, in attempting to, I was doing damage. It was as if I was lining up on the track next to Florence Griffith Joyner each and every day and expecting myself to keep up. My hamstrings – nay my whole body would have taken a beating if I ever even dreams of going up against Flo Jo but, more importantly, my self-esteem would have been obliterated. And it was. 

    I wasn’t too keen on the idea of deleting social media. The other day, my six-year-old son was staring out of the car window into the massive sky above. “Mom,” he said, “I don’t like to think about the universe.” I told him I get that. He confirmed that it’s the vastness that makes him feel small. It’s dark and lonely out there in the universe. I was so used to having and being on social media that I thought that deleting it would untether me from the earth and send me out there into the universe, alone, cold, and in the dark. 

    When I first came across posts on social media by patients in cancer treatment, it made me feel less alone.  Somehow, in spite of the fact that I wasn’t really looking for it, I’d come across people posting about their experiences with cancer. There was even a woman preparing for her mastectomy at around the same time that I was. I wasn’t alone. 

    Perhaps you can see where this is going. As soon as I clicked on a couple of cancer posts, the algorithm latched on. Soon, a good portion of my feed was cancer. And I couldn’t help myself but read and click. I’d try to close the app and just the c-word alone would catch my eye. I felt an obligation to consume it all. 

    One of the prayers that I had when I was going through treatment was this: that my suffering makes someone else’s a little less. There are certain aspects of Catholicism that are engrained in me and that’s one of them: offer it up. Offer up your suffering so that it has meaning if not for you, then at least for someone else. For the most part, I was thinking about my daughters in those moments, praying that somehow me going through all of these trials would save them from a similar fate. In the early days of my treatment, the genocide in Palestine was dire and so my prayers were also for mothers there. In my moments of pain rooted in my own body attacking my breasts, all mothers and children and their bonds and their bodies and suffering all became mixed together. 

    And some of that responsibility and connection carried over to my fellow cancer patients on social media. Somehow, it was my duty to keep reading all of these threads. But reading, engaging them seemed to created more until everything was cancer content. It’s about as much fun as it sounds. 

    This was all in the midst of me, in-person, going with some regularity to a literal cancer center where I would sit in waiting rooms nearly full with other people who possibly also had cancer. And at one appointment, my doctor mentioned (without violating HIPPA) that he’d been recently seeing more of the type of cancer that I have. Later, as I moved into the recurrence prevention phase, he mentioned that he had a patient in a very similar situation to me. At the very least, it’s possible that the doctor was able to use some of what he learned treating me to better care for the other woman. 

    These are connections that I couldn’t get on social media. 

    And so it was that I had it all wrong. When I finally cut the tether, I didn’t float out into the vast, cold universe. Rather, I floated back down to very real, solid, warm earth. 

    Visit my Ko-fi page to drop a tip in my cup.

  • To rest or not to rest.

    Daily writing prompt
    Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.
    View all responses

    I’ve been thinking about rest a lot this week. Maybe it’s because the kids are on spring break and I feel like this is my opportunity to also take a rest. I’m conflicted between going out and doing and sitting around and not doing. I’m plagued by the idea that I might use my time poorly. And I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that in the society I live in we have little control over our time. When given the “freedom” to decide how to use it, I am paralyzed with indecision.

    And this might be because I don’t really know what rest is for me, yet.

    I find the idea of resting so that I can be more “productive” to be terribly off-putting. I don’t want to live for productivity. And, yet, on the other hand, living in a permanent state of rest is also unappealing. The other day, I read someone’s piece of advice for going through cancer treatment: to stay active during the day so that sleep comes more easily at night. And while I’ve experienced the truth to this, I find myself getting trapped on this mental hamster wheel, going around in a rest and productivity circle. I find myself at times floating out in space wondering: how much is enough activity? How much is enough productivity? How much sleep is enough? Too much?

    For a time, I’ve been relying heavily on my watch and phone to tell me these things. I gave up the sleep monitoring when I realized that wearing my watch (and knowing it was monitoring me) was making me sleep less well. I threw caution (or perhaps the need to have hard and fast sleep numbers) and stopped wearing it at night. I think I’ve been sleeping better.

    I still rely on it heavily to monitor my daily steps and my activity (you know, those primary-colored rings to close in a burst of fire works when you meet your daily goal). I’ve reached a crucial crossroads where I’ve been meeting my goals every day for well over a month now. Do I increase the goals or, again, throw a bit of caution to the wind and decide to just trust how I feel, trust my body to tell me when I’ve had too much or not enough?

    My body happens to be a trifecta of identities that cause me to struggle to listen to it and to trust it: a woman, racially marginalized, and, now, a cancer patient. With all three, the society and culture I live in is often telling me about my body, trying to control it (more successfully than I’d like to admit) or the other extreme of completely ignoring it. And so it is that perhaps I rely on those little rings closing than I need to. And perhaps I spent a little too much time (meaning any time at all) on the internet trying to figure out my own body and how to take care of it.

    So back to spring break. We didn’t make any big plans even though I didn’t know I’d be in radiation treatment until a few weeks before it started. I also didn’t know how exhausting the treatments would be. Still, I’m trying to stay active. One of the funny things about radiation treatment is that you’re just lying on this table for the twenty minutes to forty minutes that it takes to complete it. It looks like rest. But it isn’t restful at all. The machine is whirring and humming and moving around you, the radiation techs are drawing on you, sometimes shifting your body a bit, but mostly they’re in the other room operating the machine. The position is awkward, the table is hard (in spite of the extra thick, cushiony sweatpants I’ve been wearing), and the whole thing is more mentally tiring than I give it credit. I’m trying to stay on top of taking care of my skin and sometimes a sore throat or just some discomfort in the area arises afterwards. Yeah, it’s not the worst of things, but it’s still not restful or fun by any means.

    So I guess that one lesson I’ve learned from going through it is just that rest can look myriad different ways to different people and in different times in our lives.

    The other day, I decided I had enough energy to go with my daughter to a Smithsonian museum one afternoon. It was a lot of walking and my feet were exhausted. But it was also, I don’t know, restful in a way. I got to turn off the part worrying part of my brain and just enjoy my daughter’s company and her excitement about history. I didn’t have to be a cancer patient. I didn’t have to make any real plans or major decisions. I did buy a book (George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy) and some chocolate before we headed home. And I closed all my rings, easily.

    The next day, I got to sit on the couch and read the book, which was stunning. And although I wouldn’t always say that reading has always been restful to me, it was very restful to read Asian American history.

    But I think that ultimately the aspect of these days of spring break that have been most restful have been that I’ve just let go and trusted. I didn’t feel like I had to make anything happen (exercise or trips or even time to rest and recover from radiation). I just let things happen. And the end result has been that I’ve been able to rest and (dare I say it?) be productive too.