add Rest

_cache/webmentions.json

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 {
-  "lastFetched": "2024-12-21T14:13:03.258Z",
+  "lastFetched": "2024-12-21T17:23:55.725Z",
   "children": [
     {
       "type": "entry",

content/.obsidian/workspace.json

@@ -13,12 +13,12 @@
             "state": {
               "type": "markdown",
               "state": {
-                "file": "blog/2024-12-20-storage.md",
+                "file": "blog/2024-12-21-rest.md",
                 "mode": "source",
                 "source": false
               },
               "icon": "lucide-file",
-              "title": "2024-12-20-storage"
+              "title": "2024-12-21-rest"
             }
           }
         ]
@@ -165,8 +165,9 @@
   },
   "active": "6bf9b4c0dd8b4ce0",
   "lastOpenFiles": [
-    "blog/2024-12-14-distraction.md",
     "blog/2024-12-20-storage.md",
+    "blog/2024-12-21-rest.md",
+    "blog/2024-12-14-distraction.md",
     "blog/2024-11-29-posse.md",
     "blog/2024-11-30-defeat.md",
     "blog/2023-11-30-lecture.md",
@@ -192,7 +193,6 @@
     "blog/2017-10-12-desire-paths.md",
     "blog/2017-10-20-the-commons-and-the-common-good.md",
     "blog/2017-08-07-parting-gifts.md",
-    "blog/2017-11-10-on-developing-networked-communities.md",
     "blog/img/msu-paths.jpg",
     "blog/img/weekend.png"
   ]

content/blog/2024-12-21-rest.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+title: Rest
+date: 2024-12-21T10:00:16-05:00
+permalink: /rest/
+tags:
+  - reading
+  - work
+---
+I'm back to my all-too-slow reading of Oliver Burkeman's *Four Thousand Weeks*, and am finding myself a bit haunted this morning by this passage:
+
+> Rest is permissible, but only for the purposes of recuperation for work, or perhaps for some other form of self-improvement. It becomes difficult to enjoy a moment of rest for itself alone, without regard for any potential future benefits, because rest that has no instrumental value feels wasteful.
+
+Haunted, because I *at least in theory* started a vacation yesterday -- or, rather, two days of vacation followed by my university's relatively new December 24 to January 1 closure. But I'm having a super hard time actually turning work off. Partly because the needs of my colleagues have not stopped just because I've taken a couple of days off. Partly because I cannot get myself to stop reflexively checking all of the various messaging systems through which they ask me for stuff.
+
+That's on me, not them. I'm thinking a lot this morning about what it would take for me to genuinely shut everything down and walk away from it all, even for a couple of days. It's tough to imagine.
+
+Anyhow, Burkeman goes on from this passage to talk about the "pathological productivity" inspired in no small part by the collision of Calvinism and capitalism, and the ways that one's "tendency toward virtuous striving and thriftiness" were -- ahem, *are* -- imagined to be a sign of one's state of salvation. Which rang all kinds of bells for me, and made me go in search of [this blog post from 2012](outward-and-visible-signs/), which reminded me how little I've learned in the last twelve years, or rather how much I've had to learn again and again and again.
+
+Rest for its own sake. Rest for purposes that are non- -- or even anti- -- instrumentalist. All of this requires the ability to understand the value of the human in the world as about *being* rather than *doing*. And this is hard, hard, hard.