It’s Friday! Do you know what that means?
It is time to rest.
For those of you on screen readers (which don’t read out emphasis, bold, or italics) that was [massive amount of emphasis here] it is time to rest [end massive amount of emphasis].
Rest includes:
- Sitting on your ass playing video games, reading (relaxing) books or magazines, or doing puzzles or other brain-unplugging activities.
- Playing catch, fetch, or keep-away from your dogs, kids, goats, whatever have you in the yard if the weather is decent (or even if it isn’t).
- Taking a nap. Or three! Or going to bed now and waking up Saturday.
- Taking a bath or a shower.
- Going to the movies or a show or an orchestral performance or what-have-you as long as it’s not the bad kind of stressful.
- Sitting in a room where nothing is making noise (except the heating or AC I suppose because you don’t want to be uncomfortable) so the stimulation parade is off for a bit.
- Eating a healthy (no really not like I eat, an actually healthy) meal.
- Taking a walk somewhere that doesn’t require you to engage with every person you see.
Rest does not include:
- Doomscrolling.
- Watching the news.
- Reading that response from your local politician about that note you sent them recently.
- Doomscrolling somewhere else that you think I didn’t count the first time.
- Reading the news alerts.
- Getting together with people who are having trouble unplugging and are going to spend the entire time freaking out about the news. (If your goal is to help them unplug, decide whether you need to unplug and relax yourself first before engaging with the whirlwinds of bad news. Remember that whole “put your own oxygen mask on first” thing? Yeah.)
All the disasters currently happening will still be happening Monday, and maybe some fresh ones just for spice. You can’t fix any of them today.
but anne i was looking for something militant i could do
The most militantly decent thing you can do to yourself in an environment where everyone wants you to burn out is say “fuck you, it’s time to rest”.
Resting is a skill. You have to practice it. Don’t get angry at yourself if you don’t do very well at it today. There’s a weekend every week, so you can try again next Friday. Even if you only get 10 minutes (or 10 seconds!) of rest you normally wouldn’t get, you’re ahead of Past You. And Past You is exhausted, so she needs Current You to rest.
I’ll be back Monday with some militant decency we can use your help on.