One month of funemployment

Funemployment

I have been off work for over a month now, and I've learned quite a few things here about rest, recovery, and my mental health. Here are those points:

Time off is not:

1. Meant for you to create your side hustle or side business, sure a side business sounds lovely but the goal isn't to create new things. It's to recover from what you have done, all the work you've put into your career or anything else you're taking a break from. The anxiety of not producing money may set in but planning time off and taking it was meant to give you the ease of months without worrying about finances. That's why we plan for time off like this. Not producing a pay check is counter to what we've been taught, money brings everything to us in our society, home, food, etc. Making a plan before time off eases this burden by making sure finances are stable, setting expectations that you will be spending money and not recovering the money just yet, should already be established. Time off isn't meant to create a whole new business to produce money you are in fear of losing.

2. Meant to start building new things unless those things impact your mental health in a positive way. Again, time off is for resting. Don't feel the pressure to build up your skill set to get back into the career grind and game, its not meant for that. It's meant to rest your brain from all the learning you've already done.

3. To be constantly busy and always going. Rest rest rest, the only way to recover is to rest. However you can rest you need to do this for yourself, the anxiety you get from not moving constantly or making progress on other things will detract from the rest you could be getting and the healing you could be gaining. Time off is meant to go slow, steady, do things you want to do for you, not always needing to be active.

Time off is:

1. Sitting in the stillness for a while. It's meant for you to get bored, to even have the opportunity to be bored again. We don't always have to be occupied by things, by news, media, tasks, to-do's etc. Having time to get bored again like we used to as children, and finding magic in things that other people don't. Having new ideas, getting inspired by the flowers, listening to the birds, sitting in the sunshine on a warm day. This is what rest is meant to feel like.

2. Meant to reflect on what you've been through. Reflection can look like reviewing what you've done and how you've done it in the past, it can be taking time to think about past trauma and working through it, it can be therapy, journaling, yoga, meditation etc. Reflection comes in many forms but time off is meant to look at how far we've come, deal with things we may have never had the time or energy to truly deal with, and move forward.

3. Doing whatever you want whenever you want. Want to sleep all day? Do it. Want to go for a run? Do it. Eat ice cream and video game? Do it. Go to the market and cook a hearty meal? Do it. It's all you my friend, no one else can tell you what resting is like for you except yourself, trust yourself and do what you feel like doing.

Thank you for reading this post! We appreciate it so much. These are things I've discovered during my time off, although sometimes these items may seem obvious to me they really weren't obvious at all. It's taken me about a month to fully understand that I need to rest and not continue to go go go like I used to. My mind and body got used to constantly being on the go, the transition to not being so active is a challenge but I'm starting to understand it. I hope if you're taking time off to rest and recover too that you can fully rest to get all the benefits from taking a career break.