Can we really rest? Even now?

Hey y'all. This is your regular reminder that it's only month 1 of 2025 and week 2 of the circus. I suspect you, like me, are feeling some combination of "I can't keep up", "I have to stop watching", "going to just hunker down and focus on my business and my people," and "OMG, what next?" Sometimes all of that in one hour! If that wasn't enough, the universe is also delivering nasty respiratory viruses, apocalyptic fires, and snowmageddon in unexpected places.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I've been thinking about the core themes of this newsletter, one of which is rest. And well, I'm just going to keep reminding you that rest still matters, is still possible, and is in fact essential.

Especially now, when we're facing so much unpredictability, designed to throw us off our game, it's easy to forgo rest and its weaponized cousin, self-care. So I'm here to remind you that it still matters. Rest is not a passive submission to exhaustion (though that happens too!), but an active choice to honor, respect and care for our bodies and ourselves. It's a defiant choice not to give in to our dehumanization, to overfunctioning, to being a hamster on the wheel of fascism.

So keep resisting the urge to self-sacrifice on the altar built by mad men (these ones and the ones before). Nap, but also be proactive about preserving and increasing your energy and joy. Let me break this down for you with an example or two.

Example 1. Say your plan for the week is to start meal prep so you can stop eating a pint of ice cream when your back to back calls are done and you haven't eaten all day (I mean, the ice cream is the least of your problems here, but go with me). But the first Sunday that you're planning to meal prep, a friend from out of town happens to be in town and you go to a boozy brunch and come home and maybe still eat that ice cream. Before you know it, you've binge watched Season 2 of The Night Agent and it's 1 am (on Monday!) and your first call is at 8:30 am. And the veggies you ambitiously purchased on Sunday night are sitting in the fridge mocking you. What do you do?

Nothing, of course. I let those veggies sit there because work is work and in case you haven't noticed, these executive orders?

Hmmm. Just like you pivoted from meal prep to that boozy brunch, you can pivot from the work schedule. You prob can't do anything about the 8:30 am call. But you can look at the rest of the day and the day after and create the hour or so a day you need to get your a*# in gear for the long road ahead and also because you deserve to be healthy, which sometimes involves a pint of ice cream.

One more example…last year, when you thought the election was going to go a different way, you planned a trip with girlfriends to Puerto Rico in February. But now, well, you know. And then a key staff member quit and made his last day Jan 31. You're about to cancel that trip because how could you possibly go away now?

Nope. You get someone else on your team to play back up. And you give them your cell number and tell them that they can call you if needed. And you let that s*@$ go for a week because it's going to be here when you get back.

Maybe I'm the only one that's been in these situations. Not you? Oh well. Send this to a friend.

With all the care in the world,
Sayu