The Exhausting Search for Rest

I am coming towards the end of the summer holiday and as I reconnect with friends and colleagues the inevitable question arises – did I have a good break? Am I feeling rested? Yes, I say, and it is true, partly. But it makes me wonder what counts as rest, and is the search for rest my responsibility alone?

When the news outlets decided that Rachel Reeves’ tears in the House of Commons were of public interest I thought about writing a blog titled ‘I cried today too, Rachel’. I didn’t though, because I didn’t have time in the stretched and stressful end of the academic year which does not neatly overlap with the end of my children’s school year. The blog would have been about the discomfort and injustice I felt when reading that the first reaction was almost always ‘is she up to the job?’ As if expressing emotion through tears was somehow grounds for a performance review. Whatever that emotion was – sadness, frustration, exhaustion, we don’t know, and I don’t feel it is any of my business to know – my first question was why does no-one seem to care if she is okay? Where are the conversations about the unhealthy work cultures that politicians face, the gendered dynamics of judging emotion, the expressions of solidarity from all of us ground down by the capitalist refusal of rest? Rachel Reeve’s desire to reassure us that she was “cracking on with the job” is indicative of the pressure she felt to deflect away from personal criticism and the questions being posed about her professional capabilities.

Since experiencing long covid, I have become rather obsessed with the idea of rest. I try and structure my days to allow moments of rest, I try and finish work on time and not go back to it in the evening, I have a somewhat uncompromising approach to my bedtime. This all helps. But rest is one part of a larger story. It is balanced or undermined by what is not rest. It is a constant battle to unravel structures of guilt which are placed around rest. My ability to achieve a healthy work-life balance is not my responsibility alone, and the sometimes overwhelming impossibility of actually resting, particularly as a working parent, makes me feel like the exhausting search for rest is just another thing I’m not doing very well.

Instead, I have been reflecting on nourishment. What can I do to nourish myself? This might be about food and exercise and physical nourishment, but it might also be about emotional, psychological, spiritual nourishment. I spent my summer holiday in a camper van driving around Europe with my husband, two children, and dog. It was not what might be called restful. But it was nourishing. I was outside in the fresh air most of the time, I went wild swimming almost every day, I was able to hold more than a snatched conversation with my husband and to see my children as companions in adventure. Life can’t always be a camper van road trip, but it can be more nourishing.

So, what do I need to nourish myself? For my part I can continue a refusal to normalise a ‘grind culture’, to signal to others when I need rest, to give myself permission to choose rest over other activities. Perhaps most importantly I can stop seeing rest as the opposite of work, but as an integral part of being a healthy and happy member of the workforce. I love my work, I really do. I am conscientious and care deeply about contributing to a collective effort of education and knowledge production. But I also love and care deeply about my garden, my morning dog walks, my chats in the corridor with colleagues, my Netflix binging when I am too tired to read, and sometimes I care most about just staring out of the window. As I think about the imminent re-launch into the school and work juggle, I am deciding to focus on what I can do each day to nourish my sense of self, my sense of community, and my sense of responsibility towards others near and far.

Right now, though, I think I’ll have a rest.

August 2025