Rhythms of Rest
Letting go of high hopes in the writerly life, one gardening analogy at a time
I stepped into this summer with high hopes.
While my boys were at an all-day (free!) performing arts day camp the first five weeks of summer, I vowed to do the following:
Pitch at least two or three times a week
Write lots of articles for all those pitches that got a “yes”
Finish my middle grade novel
Finish research and conduct interviews for my next nonfiction project
Apply for writing grants, lots and lots of grants
Write by hand daily, working through exercises in The Poet’s Companion and The Byline Bible
Make more connections in the nonprofit communications sector
Hustle, with lots and lots of side projects
On and on the list went. How many of those goals do you think I accomplished at the end of the five weeks? Not a whole lot.
And also, what did happen was enough.
I did get into rhythms, but they weren’t rhythms of production as much as they were rhythms of rest.
Because when the boys went to camp and I had the house to myself, I took the time to listen to my body. I paid attention to myself. I determined what I needed in that moment — or in twenty-three days of bliss-filled time to myself — and figured out that I didn’t need more noise.
I didn’t need more deadlines or more stress; I didn’t need to push myself past the brink of burnout but I needed to lean into quiet healing. I needed the occasional deadline, sure, for there is something called a mortgage that needs to be paid, but I didn’t need to fill my days with thousands of words and endless check-off lists and self-imposed deadlines galore.
I needed rest.
I suppose it’s like eating seasonally, in a way. When I visit the farmer’s market or take a stroll through the backyard garden, I learn to eat seasonally. I may crave lettuce in the middle of July, but lettuce doesn’t tend to like the heat; I may want a fresh tomato, right off the vine in the middle of January, but tomatoes do like the heat and tend to pitter out in September or October, when the weather turns.
Eating seasonally begs the eater pay attention to the seasons, to the heat and the cold, to what nature intended be on your plate at a particular time of year.
And whether we eat or grow, eating seasonally means letting the soil rest when it’s time to rest.
In gardening, seasons of rest typically happen in the winter months. You let a bed lie fallow for a season or plant cover crops to replenish the soil; you rotate the crops, not growing tomatoes or zucchini in the same bed, year after year.
Is it not the same in the writerly life or in other creative pursuits?
Summer, as it goes, is a time for me to rest as a writer. It’s a time to connect with neighbors and eat dinner around the picnic table in the backyard; it’s a time to sit with a book and host family and take long road trips up and down the West Coast, just because. It’s a time to stare at the sunflowers, without the distraction of a screen or noise, and let staring at the sunflowers be enough.
It’s a time to let the thoughts and musing simmer on the back burner of my mind, to give dreams a time to ruminate and take shape in my heart.
It’s a time to refrain from hustle culture and rewrite a new set of high hopes.
Might it be the same for you?
Good to see. Feeling burnout often as well, or perhaps it's summer calling and I need to heed that call.
I loooooove this. I'm on day 8 of 10 of a trip to connect with friends (new and old) face-to-face and fill my heart and soul back up (I'm working a little too but not much). Thanks for sharing, friend.