Reimagining R&R

By Lily Baldwin for Strike Magazine Athens

The past three months have been a complete shift from the pandemic-stalled summer we experienced in 2020. After a year of lockdown and months of vaccine prep and administration, this summer began to feel kind of (dare I say it?) normal. Being able to get vaccinated and see friends and family has been a game-changer for a lot of us. The return of some normalcy has drawn out an abundance of young partiers ready to take on the night, with Washington Square Park in New York becoming a hub for young loving, day drinking, and serious socializing nearly all hours of the day and night. Sounds dandy, right?

I’ll be honest, though. I found myself feeling really guilty all summer long because I felt like I wasn’t making the most of my newly reinstated sense of freedom. While what felt like the whole world was reveling in the Summer of Love, I sat at home watching CSI: Crime Scene Investigation with my sister and drinking ungodly amounts of chocolate milk. Like everyone else, I had just spent the last year and a half isolated from any semblance of normal social life, and the mindset I had over the course of this pandemic is going to be very hard to shift. Why is it that everyone all of a sudden could just go back to life as if nothing had changed?

Here’s what I had to remind myself, after some therapy, of course: what you see portrayed as the “summer of love” and the “return to life” is not the case for most people. When posting social gatherings on social media became accepted as the norm once again, Instagram-savvy influencers didn’t waste a moment making sure every follower was aware that they were “back at it.” The fear of missing out, or FOMO, returned with a vengeance. I felt like I couldn’t keep up. The pandemic had drained me mentally and emotionally, and I was shocked to see folks so eager to leave their beds. Personally, quarantine was not a time of rest; the stress and chaos around us prevented our already anxiety-riddled generation from relaxing. Unless you are a wealthy celebrity, this pandemic was far from a vacation. 

There seems to be this unspoken expectation that we should all be able to leave an insanely draining year behind us and go about our lives without a thought. As it turns out, there is absolutely no way I can muster up the same kind of freshman-year energy that I had two years ago. These days, leaving the house is a task, and that makes me feel lazy, which I hate. A wise friend of mine asked me what I had been up to during break, and I told her the truth: that I had been doing absolutely nothing for days. And she said:

“We LOVE doing nothing! For real, it’s so nice to not have anything to do and just rest.”

Rest. That word completely reframed how I was viewing my summer break. I wasn’t being lazy or antisocial, I was resting, recovering, and refilling my cup. It was more than necessary, and it was definitely not a waste of my time. For some people, the most valuable way to spend their day is out and about with friends until the sun comes up. I personally found value in my days spent with my family at home, or going on a hike with my sister. That does not mean one day holds more meaning than another, it is just a reminder that everyone finds their peace in different ways. According to an article by the Harvard Business Review titled, “The Upside of Downtime,” taking periods of rest such as afternoon naps and down days can increase energy, sharpen focus, and allow us to better prioritize the tasks we have at hand. Successful business author Tony Schwartz once wrote, “human beings perform best and are most productive when they alternate between periods of intense focus and intermittent renewal.” Schwartz is a journalist-turned-millionaire, or living proof of his ideal. 

Success and happiness don’t require that you spend every minute in go-mode, a la Mark Wahlburg’s viral training routine. In fact, to tackle the work ahead of you, it is essential that you get ample rest outside of your average night’s sleep. There wasn’t anything to do this summer, and I loved every minute of it. Downtime is important, and it is a dangerous idea that doing nothing makes you lazy. We’ve spent months struggling to cope with the social changes caused by COVID-19. It’s unreasonable to expect that we can all just jump back into a full schedule of school, work, and social activities without some time to readjust. Gauge your mental health and allow an unlimited grace period to ease back into things. And I mean unlimited! The pandemic has changed so many of us, impacting our lives and causing trauma that no one could have prepared for. It’s going to take some time to heal, and that’s okay. And in all honesty, the best days are the ones where you can focus on nothing but your own peace of mind.

Bottom line: be patient with yourself, and remember to rest. It’ll take some time to refill your cup, but it’ll be running over before you know it.

Strike Out,

Lily Baldwin

University of Georgia