What is Rest?

What is rest?  

I don't know.

Roll credits!  That was the shortest blog post ever.

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...Okay, so that is still an accurate summary, but I do have a talent for talking about nothing for a while, when I choose to do so.

I'm nearly to the end of my break, with classes starting up again in another week.  A month gone already.  I entered into it with both relief and trepidation.  Relief because nursing school and all else has been thrilling but also exhausting, particularly with a pandemic thrown in; there was a bit of manic laughter after submitting my last final.  Trepidation because historically having time off is brilliant for the first two days, and then after that I begin to feel uncomfortable, where being idle for too long reminds me too much of time spent convalescing post health debacles.  That does not bode well for my mental state in those moments, where trying to find rest is oddly counterproductive.  

So what to do about that?  Mostly, I have been intentionally observant in this time.  From previous experience, I find that scheduling a few pieces in gives enough structure to meet the threshold of not too idle, so I sprinkled in a something at least every three days, so there was at least a something.  These included two online Bob Ross Paint-a-Long parties, D&D, a handful of catch-up calls, a few household projects, writing time slated around Luna's schedule, Discord-enabled Civilization games, Skype Sequence games with my parents, joined Zumba Zooms, and fit in a few other things here and there.    

And then there was also binge-watching some TV, a couple of carefully chosen video games, browsing for new memes, and longish walks with Luna sprinkled in the gaps.  The greatest surprise was reading seven books and finding the sheer joy of reading for fun again.  Reading without feeling guilty about not spending my time on my studies or something else, that's a feeling I had definitely forgotten.  

I don't think I can put a fence around what "rest" looks like--it's a feeling as much as it is an action.  I can only attempt to describe the outward appearance of the right set of circumstances for my own experience of these particular feelings.  My rest looks like being the appropriate amount of busy, but the kinds of busy feel vastly different.  More importantly, I have the ability to set my own schedule--that's what seems to be the true marker of what is a quiet day verses a relaxing day.  Watching a movie and reading a book and going for a walk are common themes, though sometimes an intense workout, being in a group of friends (virtually or otherwise as the world allows), or meeting new people are a much stronger effect.  For me, the same activity on a different day is not as restful as it would be on another, which seems...odd.

However, I've also been trying to quantify how much of the day on my own schedule "counts" toward rest.  Sometimes, I think that it's more the absence of a major stressor.  But even with that in my case absence of multiple major stressors with the presences of some minor good ones seems to be the sweet spot.  

So long story short, I feel that what counts as rest might have trends for certain folks, but how much energy is regained or how much time is needed or what activity is best seems to all be a moving target.  And that's simply not how I've thought of rest before.  There are patterns of certain activities working for me better than others, and there are trends about timing.  Yet, I feel that relaxing requires either a specific kind of openness or a specific kind of self-awareness OR sufficient practice to have figured out patterns anyway.  

I have some pieces honed nicely, but I daresay there's always room for improvement. 

Meanderings condensed into a convenient list:

• What you need for relaxation can be a moving target, where certain things can work better on certain days with certain situations.
• It takes a level of practice/self-awareness to get good at relaxing.
• It's okay to give yourself the freedom to explore these things.