14th September, 2021

Friday’s writing day ended with a wonderfully stomach-whirling photo sent from my wife. Our infant son had thrown up, achieving around 90% of my wife’s torso. The picture needn’t have said more than three words, never mind a thousand. It was time to go.

That semi-cute and normalized instance of one of our kids being sick soon leveled up to something other. On Saturday, my daughter reported an ‘icky tummy’ before bed. Alarm bells rang deep and silent when my own body reported shivers, weakness, and a whole series of interconnected uh-ohs. I fell asleep on my daughter’s bed, reading her a bedtime story. An hour or so after my wife kindly helped pile me into our own bed, I awoke to the sound of my daughter coughing…or rather, what turned out to be her clearing the last of her vomit from her stomach and throat onto her bed sheets. There wasn’t a Disney item in a meter radius that wasn’t splattered. And then, the crescendo.

While my wife comforted our daughter, I was carried by my instincts to grab the bowl that was brought to our daughter’s bedside, left empty having not been wielded in time to catch the output of her convulsions. It was just as well. I hadn’t grabbed the bowl for her use, but mine. I let go of everything I’d consumed that day. The bowl normally reserved for eggs, flour, sugar, and butter was filled instead with…stuff. All the while, our son cried, the dog pined, and my wife couldn’t do anything except laugh (to avoid the more desirable tears). It was chaos.

All of that completely wiped my originally plans to enjoy the silence of late night on Saturday and Sunday to continue working on a programming problem I was enjoying. Rubbish TV in the background, glass of red by my side, and graphical user interface syntax on the dimmed screen. That was the plan. Instead, I (rather we) absolutely had to invest in rest. Note, I did not say ‘reluctantly forced to rest’. This arguably overdetailed instance of being unwell paints a clear picture of why rest must be framed as an investment. By seeing rest as something as valuable as investing in an asset, you are caring for yourself as such. You gift yourself the time, the physical and mental space to allow recuperation to happen to its fullest.

The parallel version of yourself who would project false bravado in service of ‘work’ doesn’t stand a chance of going the distance with the rested version of you moving towards an ambitious goal.

How and when, then, can you invest in rest?

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