I can’t help myself feeling guilty for not producing.
Even if I’m exhausted and need to tap out, or my neck has been hurting and stiff for a week now, or that one of my fingers is numb.
I know that rest is political because it goes against the idea of having value only when being productive.
I’ve internalized this belief for so long that it’s difficult to just feel at ease with the idea that sometimes I am not writing grants, drawing, preparing prints, looking for the next call for projects, looking for paid gigs, promoting my practice on social media, updating my website, and make some calls for some banking stuff.
I’m not sure what my chronotype is, aka a person’s natural preference for when they feel most alert and when they want to sleep. I’m trying to frame it as how to feel more at ease in my body, but it tends to lean towards ‘optimization of habits’.
As disability theorist Alison Kafer writes, “rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds”.
Yes girl, but what do I do about that guilt??
