Rhena Writes

Tag: rest

  • 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.

  • To rest or not to rest.

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