jan 9 2025: take a break or your body will take one for you…

What’s the age-old saying? Choose one day of the week to rest or your body will choose for you.

I am infamously trying to outrun rest, and always failing. Blame the ADHD, the drive to succeed, or the immigrant mentality. Whatever the reason for my constant drive to “do more, do more, do more” is not as important as the reality that rest is just as important as the work. And in fact, rest is radical, in a society happy to misuse it’s citizen’s bodies and minds.

There is a story of two woodchoppers, both starting their shift early in the morning. One stops at noon, returning home for an hour, and then back to work in the woods. The other woodchopper keeps chopping wood while his company disappears, wondering where he has gone.

Somehow, the woodchopper that leaves for an hour is always able to chop more wood than his companion, who stays with his work the whole day. One day, the tireless woodchopper asks his partner,

“Where do you go for an hour?”.

“To sharpen my axe,”.

Rest is just as important as the work.

Don’t push past your limits one day, in hopes of squeezing out as much productivity as possible. Life is a marathon that requires you to renew yourself each night. We are not meant to go on forever.

Rest. Recover. Renew. And show the world what you can do.

-immy, age: 27