Taking a Rest Day

Taking a rest day is typically connected with exercise. After a few days of pushing hard in the gym we skip a day to let our bodies recover. But what if we took a rest day from something everyday? What if instead of fighting through the entire mundane repetitive to-do list, we allowed ourselves a rest day from things?

Hear me out because we are all doing something like this some days. Do you have a set day of the week for eating out, or a declared leftover night? That is taking a rest day from cooking; you have taken food prep off our list and given your brain a needed break in meal planning. 

Today I am giving myself a rest day from all household chores except dishes. I have done a lot of extra cleaning and laundry lately and I need a break so I am taking a rest day from cleaning tasks. During the time I would have been doing laundry I can sit outside reading while the weather is nice. 

When we take a rest day from exercising it is to let our bodies recover and rest; it is about respecting the boundaries of what we can do and not pushing ourselves to the point of breaking. If we allow ourselves that same latitude for mental tasks just think of how less stressed we could all be. I think that making the mental shift of “I don’t have time” or “I don’t want to” into “I can skip this task today so that I can better spend my mental energy on something that will fulfill a deeper need.”

Using this idea of prioritizing and giving myself the allowance for mental health to skip something has been a game changer. When I look at it as a mental health choice, I remove the feelings of guilt for not having done the chore.

I’ve also found that, like with a workout regimen, that pre-scheduling rest days is helpful. If i know that i only have one good weather day coming up, then that is a day i should rest from intensive chores and inside tasks so that i can enjoy the sunshine. If I have a day filled with errands and appointments, I don’t make dinner, I take a rest day for that and declare leftover night. 

I see taking rest days from our to-do list redundancies as self-care. It gives a part of our brains a chance to relax or to refocus on something that fills our souls and refreshes our spirit. Today, for me, that means skipping laundry, walking to the library, and then spending the afternoon sitting in the backyard reading. It is going to rain tomorrow, so the laundry can be done then.

Les Miserables

We saw the Les Miserables stage musical last weekend, and it has left me in a conflicted place. The problem is that I am a musical theater lover, but also a French literature nerd, and Les Miserables is one of my soft spots.

I started learning the French language in 2nd grade. When I got to high school, every year we would watch a film version of Les Mis, made in France, and totally in French. It helped with our language skills, it introduced us to classic French literature, and it semi-introduced us to the French Revolution. Being the reader that I am, when I was 20 I read the unabridged version of the book. And while it seemed to take me forever, it was one of the bet things that I could have done as it made me appreciated the story on a deeper level. 

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Which brings me to my problem with the musical. There are many powerful songs, written for powerful voices, but there is no depth to the story that they are telling. They've cut out so much of the story that it has gone from classic tome to novella. The overlapping connections of the characters, especially Javert and Jean Val Jean are lacking in background. Their feud fuels the entire story, but that is not as prominent in the stage show as it should be.

My husband said afterwards that if he didn't know the background of the story he would have been confused by the play of events on stage. And my mother-in-law was confused; she spent all of intermission asking us to explain characters and other things. I would bet that at least 60% of the people in the theater did not even realize that the barricade uprising was connected to the French Revolution.

I love my musicals, and I love French literature, so to see them come together so poorly is frustrating. I did see the film version of the musical when it came out and I walked away from that feeling disappointed as well, but was hoping that it was just Hollywood that let me down then. I had high hopes that since this was the live stage version it would be better, but sadly that was not the case. 

Writers on Writing

Graduation gifting season is coming so I thought I'd share a book review post that I wrote about a book that I think would make a fantastic gift for any English or Journalism major.

Anyone that has a passion for writing is also constantly looking for advice on writing. We read books and blogs, and articles on how to better our writing. Sometimes it might seem like we learn about writing more than we actually write, but with each thing that we read, we find some piece of advice that sticks with us.

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Chip Scanlan’s book, Writers on Writing, is a book filled with brief interviews with authors and writers in which they share their favorite piece of advice that has stuck with them throughout their careers. It is a fascinating insight into the minds and processes of some of the amazing writers out there. And the interviews are brief, only a couple of pages, which makes it the perfect book to go through slowly with one person a day, or to binge on.

Some of the words of advice they share I have heard before, but many others were new. And I have a few that stuck out as things to try in my own writing.

If you are a writer, or you know a writer, this is a must-have book. And as graduation season approaches, let me help you cross someone off your list by saying that if you have an English major in your world, this is a fantastic book to gift them.