Saturday crash

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I find it very hard to rest. 

For me resting is not equivalent to sitting on the sofa watching Netflix, or browsing aimlessly on the internet, or some other form of modern "chill-out". For me resting is some form of regaining energy so I am able to continue whatever activity I want to do. Sometimes resting means going for a run, because my body has been inactive on a chair for a long time; other times it means stretching, because my body has been under a lot of tension; closing my eyes for a minute because they are in pain after so much screen-watching,...

Resting for me is "bending to the other side" to find an equilibrium for all my activities. What I find hard about resting is understanding towards which other side I need to bend to. Actually, the body and the mind are very misleading. For example, you may feel tired and think "I should rest", meaning, "I should sit on the sofa and do nothing", but actually, what you may need to counteract that tiredness is going for a run. Or you may think, "today was a tiring and stressful day, I need something to unwind", and you watch some series or movie, but actually what you need is to do something that stops you from watching the screen because you have been doing that all day and something that does not give you so more stimulus (because today it was tiring and stressful due to the excess of stimuli).

It reminds me of something that Tara Brach said once, that we humans are very bad at understanding what makes us happy. I am not so good at understanding what would make me rest. Mostly, I am hooked on activities and I do not want to stop. I want to keep going. All my waking hours I just want to be all go, go, go! And I manage for the whole week... and then I crash on Saturday. I deal well with the tiredness during the week. I power through. I understand the high and low levels of energy. I sleep well, I eat well, I organize my work around my energy levels. And then, Saturday: crash! I am always hoping to be able to catch up with projects (especially personal ones) during the weekend. Finally, I have time to write that part of the story I was working on, or reading that book about something I wanted to learn about, or whatever. But then I do not have the energy. Even going to a restaurant is tiring, taking a walk is tiring, washing the dishes is tiring, everything feels grueling.

Ah, Saturday! I want this "extra" day to be full of energy. I wonder what I could do to improve that. Well, as long as the answer is not "do less".





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