Taking Breaks Isn’t Procrastination
Say it with me now:
We are not worth X amount of hours.
We are not worth X amount of hours.
WE ARE NOT WORTH THE HOURS WE WORK. WE ARE THE LIVES WE LIVE. THE EXPERIENCES WE HAVE.
We are that which we cherish and hold dear.
Cue the Rent song about 525,600 minutes because it’s stuck in my head, and Rent has a fire soundtrack. BUT my good writing family, there is procrastination (which, honestly, we all should forgive ourselves more when we do procrastinate. Because it means we’re probably dealing with stress that builds up to the point that it makes life hard to function) THEN there is taking breaks.
And it is BAD if someone starts to believe that “taking breaks” is the same thing as taking care of basic human decency. I’m talking about feeling guilty for stepping outside to take a breath of air. I’m talking about feeling guilty for leaving a workspace to eat. I’m talking about feeling guilty to GET SLEEP or go to the bathroom or just LIVE.
Too often, I have friends tell me how unproductive they were. And you know the words I hear next to their confessions about watching too many Netflix shows, or eating a bag of chips, or sitting on the couch and “doing nothing” after a 5-minute nap?
Stress. Pressure. Overwhelmed. Just couldn’t handle it anymore.
The words are common to our unhealthy work habits. Those words are the words of those who have been told every lie in the book about how living is just coping and holding on is just an everyday fact of life.
But you do not deserve that. You do not deserve to be told that you are only worth a certain amount of hours. We are people, not numbers. We are living beings, not nameless. We are not to be erased, forgotten. We are to be heard, we are to be held. We are to be cherished.
Easier said than done, right? “Oh that’s just the way the world is.” Or “hard work means sacrifice” or, the classic “stop complaining”.
It’s not complaining to say that sacrifice isn’t meaningless. Sacrifice is in the belief of a greater cause, a value based system not on numbers, but on something we love and hold dear. Sacrifice means protecting something sacred.
Am I equating getting up to go to the bathroom with sacrifice? No, but hear me out.
You are valuable. Not a number, nor a price. You are valued as a person who is here to be and exist as nobody else in this world can. You have gifts that people see, no matter if you think your audience is big enough or not.
If we are valuable, then why should we believe we aren’t worthy of being cherished and taken care of? Why do we believe that we are worth less than getting up to take a walk. To breathe fresh air. To live happily and healthily with a break to get food. Drink water. To use the darn bathroom.
We are not X amount of hours. We are not quantities. We are not to be measured for the measured system is broken.
We are worth it.
You, my friend, are worth it.