A few weeks ago I went to a poetry retreat. I briskly walked to the station, shuttled myself to the airport (love the airport train), and then flew to Boston, where I was picked up by my friend E and chickadees1 in tow, and we went on our way to Parsonsfield, Maine. We had really good guacamole in a plaza somewhere halfway and then continued driving. The last thirty minute leg of the trip had us driving on a dark windy road. I tried not to look too hard into the thick wall of trees on either side of the road, because I am chicken and if I saw something looking back at me it would ruin my life. I was about to do no work for the entire retreat but didn't know it just yet.
I have not really been in the woods before. I have camped on registered campsites and have slept a minute's walk away from working plumbing. Even when visiting my Grandma's village, there were two working toilets (though you have to fill up a bucket of water yourself to flush any shit down). So we pulled up to the house and I got out and I had never seen such darkness. It was so dark it was like velvet. The first night every bang or creak in the night made me think a very tall evil man was peering into the window where I slept.
The cabin was nestled in a big wet forest. On our first morning walk, E plucked a butterfly from the brush, like, out of nowhere. How did you just find that we said. Oh it was dead over there they said. Okay and now we will pretend like finding a perfectly preserved swallowtail is normal and continue as if this isn't very special and gorgeous. Three seconds later I put my foot through a hand-made bridge, busted it open, and plunged my leg into a cool stream, which I felt almost instantly as it drowned both my sock and shoe.
"Do you wanna go back to the house?" E asked.
"No let's keep going," I said, because I may as well have kept going.
We walked in the woods. I lagged behind because I had wet feet and I have never walked off a forest trail before. I thought poison ivy poison ivy poison ivy. An itchy ring of mosquito bites rose around my ankle. We walked past a little wood stove (place to stop and snack). We tried sniffing for special animal poop that smells like pine. It started to pour rain when we were about halfway, and then I was fully wet everywhere instead of just wet in some places. My sock, when I freed it from my soaked shoe, was like I had dipped it in a vat of black sesame.
Everyone was modeling healthy resting for me — "I don't think I'll do any writing at all this retreat," A said, which made me giddy. E got out of bed whenever they wanted and I felt so happy they could sleep in. I tried extending this feeling to myself — I slept on every surface available, walked around the cabin, listened to the soaring sound of rain, slept so much, napped for the first time in so long. For some reason hard things were easy — E scooped up some cat shit next to my bed no problem, I made omelettes for everyone without thinking. Everyone talked and everyone listened. It kept raining and the forest was love in its greenness, its wetness. I didn't write because I felt like, for the first time in a while, that doing nothing was more urgent than working.
what the books have to say about rest & art
In artistic practice, there is a documented connection between slowing down and the creative process. Julia Cameron says time to do nothing, i.e., rest, is a necessary requirement for art in The Artist’s Way:
An artist must have downtime, time to do nothing. Defending our right to such time takes courage, conviction, and resiliency. Such time, space, and quiet will strike our family and friends as a withdrawal from them. It is.
Working in consulting makes it very easy to fall into a trap of trying to optimize my time, all the time. I bill hours to clients. My manager takes online courses while on vacation at the beach and then posts about it on LinkedIn. Everyone multitasks on three different slide decks during calls. Jenny Odell says NO to constant productivity in How to Do Nothing:
Unless there's something specifically about you or your job that requires it, there is nothing to be admired about being constantly connected, constantly potentially productive the second you open your eyes in the morning — and in my opinion, no one should accept this, not now, not ever.
Finally I was unable to continue working, though that moment came sooner than I expected. I requested time off work and tried to shake the insane compulsion to optimize my waking hours. It was difficult because I was so ashamed — of not being able to balance full time work with anything else, of the dishes in the sink. I made huge to do lists for myself and felt sorry when I didn't accomplish a fraction of what was on them. Right before I requested time off I read KC Davis' How to Keep House While Drowning:
Recognize that being nonproductive is a necessary diversion. Rest is necessary for energy, and rest is necessary for work.
If you are completing care tasks from a motivation of shame, you are probably also relaxing in shame too—because care tasks never end and you view rest as a reward for good boys and girls. So if you ever actually let yourself sit down and rest, you’re thinking, “I don’t deserve to do this. There is more to do.”
It's clear now, a month and a half into my time off — it takes a long time to feel rested if you have not been resting properly. I am realizing the long way is actually the only way. We will never be able to fast track a proper recovery in the same way we will never be able to automate a poetic practice. That does not mean stopping for good — either I spend the time that is required to write or draw something that feels good or I don't.
I will never be fully prepared to make something good, but that does not prevent me from making things that are good. I draw bad comics and write bad poems and sometimes I don’t. If I miss a few days, I pick up where I left off. Sometimes I do an extra two or three if I'm feeling energized. Otherwise I just continue drawing. There will never be an ideal circumstance for me to make what I want to make. But this is an ideal a circumstance as I'm ever going to get.
Today was another day where I slept in until 10am, woke up sleepy, and had a good breakfast. I buttered some leftover French baguette and then slid a couple slabs of mortadella in there — French baguette with butter and ham. Toasted it. Delicious.
My boyfriend and I went back to sleep shortly after. I didn't mean to fall asleep; usually I cuddle him until he starts twitching and squeezing my hands — that's how I know he's properly asleep, and then gently extricate myself to go read or do something quiet. But today I fell asleep quickly, which means I probably needed the extra sleep. And it has taken me many years to be able to admit something like that to myself. But I slept, and when I woke up, I felt better.
Thank you for reading as I take the time to just enjoy the rest of my time off. I’d love to hear what your relationship with rest is like right now! Are you intentional about it? What is recovery like for you? Have you ever burned out?
Chickadees is the casual name for the Chickadee Collective, a poetry / writing collective based in Boston, MA that I joined a couple years ago after I did a poetry class at Grubstreet.
This is beautifully written and it resonated with me so deeply. I told my husband last week that I absolutely needed one entire day to myself with zero resonsibilities. We have two busy kids and I work full time remote as a marketing consultant. So yesterday I took the entire day, went to the gym, sat for a half hour in a massage chair, went to a local hotel bar and sat in the library, got myself a gin drink and just opened my laptop to work on my book, while I slowly got increasingly more tipsy and listened to a woman sing country song covers. It was everything I needed. I used to have to rest because of chronic illness but now that I feel better I find myself pushing, pushing, pushing. I have to make rest a priority. Only when I am rested does creativity feel like joyful play and not just one more woeful box to check.