At the end of the week

It’s tempting to reach the end of the week and keep pushing. In American culture, of which I’m obviously most familiar, there’s a badge of pride that comes in burning the midnight oil, working the weekends, and giving every waking hour to your occupation.

I’m as guilty of this as any. Much of my life has been consumed by this desire to work my career and job and make something of myself.

That’s not bad in and of itself. But it betrays a deeper problem. We can’t help but tie our value as humans to the work we produce. And in the absense of measurable outcomes we connect our value to time spent. And if time spent is good, the more time spent the better.

Then, if something comes along as a hiccup in that job, we are shaken. Our foundation of who we are is broken up, and we start to doubt our value as humans on this big rolling ball.

There’s one way we can combat this, to pull ourselves out of the endless cycle of focusing on nothing but work. We can take breaks.

During day breaks, end of day breaks, end of week breaks, week breaks, and longer.

These cycles of pausing from work, disconnecting entirely, force us to step away from the (in my case) digital screens and see the world as a bigger place. There are people waiting to connect with us, things waiting to be seen, ideas waiting to be created.

When we force a pause, and come up for air, suddenly the problems of work have a little less hold on our minds. We’re able to see that other things matter, that we have only diminished returns on more and more endless labor.

Does that mean I’m immune to all this? No. I write this to encourage myself to take those pauses, to hold off from nonstop labor. We’re not robots, meant to go on forever. We have a limited amount of time on this planet, and we can use that in the endless pursuit of our occupation, or we can find ways to pull away from that, even in tiny bits.

This week was busier than the average week, and I found myself tempted to just keep powering through. But because of the work I actually forced myself to get out on runs at the end of the day. I’m so glad I did. As a result I’m starting to see the tiny hint of a change in the seasons.

As a year around runner I have the privilege of seeing the same woods and hills in every type of weather (smoke being the one tyep of weather I’ll not run in anymore). Because I’ve been out in the woods so much this week I’ve seen the snow melting, and the land preparing itself for the blossom of spring.

Spring hasn’t come yet, but it’s so close. I’m about to witness daily changes as plants resurrect from their long winter. It’s such a privilege, and I’m going to be out to witness it.

So, the point of all this, is to take breaks. I’m going to disconnect this weekend as much as possible, in hopes of coming back fresh on Monday.

An occupation is necessary, making money is something I need to do, but I also need to pace myself to keep doing this for years to come.