Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice Vol 5, Res 1: Practical Advice on Rest
This is a public issue of Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice. Feel free to share it!
Hi friends. Late this past Saturday night we received a phone call that Nicole’s grandfather wasn’t doing well and we needed to get to Southern California to see him immediately. We were about 2.5 hours into our drive on Sunday when we got the call that he passed. We continued south to see Nicole’s grandmother. I was quite fond of Nicole’s grandfather and this is a big loss. Needless to say, this is not at all how we planned on starting our year. Driving to SoCal and back within 60 hours was also not on our bingo card so we are both emotionally and physically exhausted. On top of this, incredibly anxious because Covid-19 is still a thing and this is the most people we’ve been around in years at this point.
All this being said, I’m going to phone it in with today’s newsletter and share a single resource, which happens to be a book! It came out within the past few months and I am really happy to have a physical copy because it is one that I will definitely revisit and reference moving forward.
Resource: Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest by Ximena Vengoechea (Bookshop | Libro)
This book is integral in bridging the gap between knowing many of us need rest and practical tips on how we can get that rest. How do we actually rest? What the heck is rest aside from napping? Divest from capitalism, sure, but what does that even look like in reality when we live in a capitalist society? Rest Easy by Ximena Vengoechea is the book I didn’t even know I needed and now that I’ve read it I need to share it with everyone.
Ximena Vengoechea wrote another book I love titled Listen Like You Mean It (Bookshop | Libro) which pulled from her knowledge as a User Experience Researcher at large tech companies. As one can imagine, she got really burned out from that job plus being an author plus being a new mom so she decided to put on her researcher hat and look into what rest is because she really, really needed it. She experimented with so many types of rest, interviewed a ton of people, and read a bunch of writing about rest not only in the United States but elsewhere. In this book, she shares not only some of her research but also the actual activities (or non-activities) that she found were restful.
At the beginning of the book, she addresses the social, racial, political, economical, etc. reasons why rest may not be accessible to some folks, or why some folks look at rest in different ways depending on their situation and background. She digs into not only how others get in our way but also, how we get in our own way of rest. The way a lot of us “rest” now, by shoving all our rest into our days off of work, is not sustainable and not actually helpful according to Vengoechea’s research.
The author writes about why it is important to rest for resting’s sake and not only so that we can do more, even though rest can promote creativity. She also explains how rest doesn’t only mean being still and how things like exercise, knitting, baking, and other hobbies can be rest. The hallmark of rest is that we generally feel better after you do it, which is why she says that mindlessly scrolling the internet doesn’t usually count as rest.
As soon as I finished this book I felt I needed to give it a reread. There is just so much in it that I want to absorb and try to implement in my every day. I think this book is also a nice companion to Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance (Bookshop | Libro), as Vengoechea gives a lot of practical advice that isn’t found in Hersey’s book.
Recent & Current Reads
Inclusion of a book in this section is not necessarily a recommendation and these books won’t necessarily be added to my Bookshop.
Recently Read:
Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business by Roxane Gay (Bookshop | Libro)
Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You by Ali Abdaal (Bookshop | Libro)
Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections by Emily Nagoski, PhD (out 1/30) (Bookshop | Libro)
Turtle Bread: A Graphic Novel About Baking, Fitting In, and the Power of Friendship by Kim-Joy, Alti Firmansyah (Illustrator), Joamette Gil (Letterer) (Bookshop)
If You'll Have Me by Eunnie (Bookshop)
Hellaween by Moss Lawton (Bookshop)
Currently Reading:
Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror edited by Jordan Peele & John Joseph Adams (Bookshop | Libro)
Your Salt on My Lips: (Mostly) Queer Literary Erotica by Liz Asch (Bookshop)
Little Rot: A Novel by Akwaeke Emezi (out 6/18) (Bookshop | Libro)
Poemhood: Our Black Revival: History, Folklore & the Black Experience: A Young Adult Poetry Anthology edited by Amber McBride, Erica Martin, & Taylor Byas (out 1/30) (Bookshop | Libro)
That’s it for this week! You can shop many books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. In fact, any Bookshop, Amazon, or Etsy links in this newsletter are affiliate links so if you shop through those, it helps support my work. Or you can leave me a tip on Ko-fi, Paypal, or Venmo.
If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481.
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