Church Production Magazine: Whenever I’m not moving, or not actively working towards checking some item off of my vast to-do list, I often feel like I’m doing something wrong. “I should be busy right now! Sitting around doing nothing makes me look and feel lazy, so I need to get something done!”
10 comments:
I think that a big part of the performance field is the need to be continuously working, not taking a break until the work is done, then jumping into the next project. Burnout is real, and it can hurt you. Rest is an important part of keeping oneself healthy. I find that taking a day for rest and a day for personal work every couple of weeks during a project can help allow me to focus on my job. Many people fall into the trap of thinking “I don’t have the time to rest” or “I can’t take a day off”, but that is rarely the truth. Often it is best to take a day now, so that you don’t end up needing even more time off due to a decline in health. I have found that physical health is often tied closely to mental health, and when you spend the time taking care of your mental state being physically healthy will follow.
On the seventh day, God rested. If God, the maker of the universe, needed a day of the week to rest, why shouldn't we need one? We can never compare to that level of power that He holds, and yet we think we can just push through another day without resting. Rest is biblical and it is a necessary part of our lives. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that and force myself to step away and focus on God. I find rest in Him, and that recharges and refreshes me to continue on with my life. He restores my soul, he comforts me. Psalm 23 says
"He *makes* me lie down in green pastures". The Lord forces us to rest, and it would be wrong for us to reject that and try to push on in our daily lives. He will provide for us and if we give up our time to Him, He will give back to us and help us to achieve more with the time that we have left.
This article took me a little by surprise relating rest directly to scripture. I clicked on this article because the longer I am in college the more I am realizing that I have trouble taking time off for me. Even in highschool I did not take time for me, I am and always have been a busy person. I can only take about a week off at a time (if that) before I get antsy and need to do something. Even then I only take that week off when I have to because there is a lull in my workload or schedule. I genuinely enjoy being busy though, I like being active and having a full schedule because honestly, I do not know how people can stand not doing things. I realize that I do need to take time to slow down and smell the roses, and I do but it is done in small doses.
I think this article was interesting to read as someone who doesn’t believe in God and is it religious in any sort of sense because it made me realize how even without believing in God and believing in everything that that stands for I do know so many people that do and so many people in this industry, not just tech people and not just actors or performers so many people believing in God and so many people praise God and follow God’s plan in a sentence that I think this article is essential for those people to read, and those people to realize that with religion you must know the whole story of it, and to understand how impactful rest is I first clicked on this article because I genuinely do believe that not taking rest is one of the worst things you can do as a productive person. After all, you can’t always be productive if you’re not taking care of yourself; taking care of yourself is the most beneficial thing you can do for your productivity. I do also think that so many people in this program, believe that if they aren’t working, and if they aren’t stressed, they are doing something wrong, which is not the case if you are productive with your time and make sure that you are taking care of yourself and doing things that are so fun for you that’s not just work and school.
Rest is so important particularly in this industry, which has a culture of working yourself to death. My mom used to work as a costume shop head in Hollywood in her early 20s and she knew a guy who stayed super late at the costume shop working, and then tried to drive home and fell asleep at the wheel and got into a crash and died, leaving behind his family. So yeah, I am a big fan of incorporating rest into your day, especially if you’re going to be driving. My mom also used to stay over at her studio when we lived in Colorado. We lived in the mountains and her studio was in Denver. So it was quite a fast and dangerous cliff side drive home which she didn’t always feel comfortable taking late at night. Although we missed her at the time, I’m really glad she made those calls to stay over instead of risking her life tying to get home.
I like that this article looked at rest on a larger scale than I am used to seeing articles about rest use. When I normally see articles, they talk about taking breaks throughout the day and having moderation in work and play by taking breaks in the middle. However that doesn’t work all that well for me, at least not always. When I work I like to take a chunk of time focused on working and then have a chunk where I am not worrying about anything at all. Moderation, or spreading the breaks out makes it so I am not rested after rest as I have just been thinking and working mentally on what I have next to do, so taking rests in the middle of a project just makes me anxious and not calm. Which I suppose this article is telling us to watch out for, but if I can take one large break after a large project, such as a year off of crops after a doubly successful year, as the article mentions, I will be rested.
I think the religious aspect of this reading was not something I was expecting, given the title, but it was a really interesting read nonetheless. I have someone who didn't really grow up involved in reading scripture, or kinda Christianity as a whole for that matter, as my parents were strictly ex-Catholics, it was interesting to see a certain perspective be encouraged using the words of scripture. I don't think I disagree with anything said, honestly, but I do find myself wondering if there's a way in which you can back yourself with scripture and also science or logic. I know that there are studies, etc. about how not getting enough sleep is bad for you, or how overworking and stress are bad for you, and I do kind of wonder if it would have helped the message at all to have something more than that one perspective in there. Maybe I'm just not the intended audience.
I can actually find myself being a little too much of a workaholic sometimes. While I can procrastinate like nobody’s business and am not good at doing work when I should be, I still do like working into late hours of the night and get real fixated on doing perfect work for a long time because then it means im being productive rather than sitting and take a break even if it is well deserved. Because of this, an article about workaholics was super enticing to me. I think its important for us in the theatre industry to read this article and understand what the message is saying. We have such long hours and love what we do so much that often we forget to take care of ourselves and our own welbeing. Resting is productive, as the article says, and even if we feel like we shouldn’t do it, you have to do it eventually, and doing so will make to a better worker in the long run.
I am a workaholic to my core and I honestly always have been, I don’t think there's anything that would be able to truly make me stop working harder than I should have to, and I’m okay with that. That being said, it's a fine line between being a functioning workaholic and pushing myself to burnout and it's a line I push more often than I probably should. The biggest thing I think has worked for me is understanding my limitations when it comes to what causes me to burn out, I know I can only push myself to my limit for so many weeks at a time before I start to really be negatively affected by it. While I still probably shouldn’t be pushing myself so hard to begin with, everyone gets into that situation sometimes whether they like it or not. I don’t personally like the idea of taking a religious approach to it, but hey, if that's what it takes for people to take care of themselves is by putting a religious spin on it, all power to you.
This article was fascinating as someone who feels like a workaholic, however, who prioritizes rest. I am not sure how I felt about most of the reasonings and argument in this article was based on religion, as I am not religious. However, I think the point still stands. I often find myself falling into depressive episodes when I am not doing things or I have excessive time with nothing to do in my hands. However, I feel as though I am someone who understands that there are still boundaries within that. For example I will stop working at night and get to bed, I don’t feel tunneling anxiety if I am not working, and I feel like I try to work during set hours so I have time off. Maybe this still isn’t good, but I feel like compared to a lot of people in this industry to prioritize product at the cost of self-care, I am ahead of the ball game.
Post a Comment