I’m Turning Off My Phone This Week

The World Is on Fire, and I’m Lying Down

I once made a reel while being wheeled into cancer surgery. That pretty much sums up my probably unhealthy work ethic. I push through and keep going, keep working no matter what. Often to my own detriment.

I’ve known for a while now that I need to do something about this.

Lately, my body, and my brain, have been screaming at me to stop. But it’s never felt like I could. Or maybe it never felt like I deserved the break. It’s often hard to tell the difference.

The news cycle doesn’t rest for anyone and right now my job is to live in it. I’ve been terrified of missing something, of not being available, of failing the incredible community I’ve built, all of you who trust me to help keep you informed.

But I can’t be any good to anyone if I burn myself out. So this time I’m listening to my body and my brain.The world is on fire, and I’m laying down. Not because I’ve given up, but because I understand that rest is the only way forward.

I know that I’m lucky to be able to do that. I have to mention this because we live in a country where too many people have no option to take a break or a rest because of job limitations and caregiving obligations.

And even though I have the ability to take a rest, I’m still terrified of doing it.

As a friend texted to me when I told her my plans for this week: The world will continue to be a dumpster fire with or without you for 7-10 days and you can’t put it out if you can’t lift a damn hose.

There’s a myth we tell ourselves, especially as women, that if we just try harder, care more, push through the exhaustion, things will get better. But that’s not how this works. The world doesn’t hand out medals for self-sacrifice. It just keeps taking.

We see it everywhere, the expectation that women will absorb the burden, smooth out the chaos, and hold everything together. We learn early that our value is measured by what we can endure, how much we can handle before breaking. Rest is seen as indulgence, as weakness.

Instagram is full of #selfcare posts where we don’t see people resting, we see them ‘optimizing’ their rest, making it productive, palatable, and pretty.

We post about our hustle, not our naps. We share the productivity hacks, not the afternoons spent staring at the ceiling because our brains simply won't cooperate. We've created digital shrines to productivity that make us feel inadequate for having basic human needs.

We weren't built for this relentless cycle of bad news, political fights, and the expectation that we should somehow keep up with it all while also living our lives. An exhausted workforce is a compliant workforce. A burnt-out electorate doesn’t vote. A drained activist base doesn’t organize. Exhaustion isn’t just a byproduct, it’s a design feature of the systems we live in.

So I am turning off. I am checking out, going dark, laying down.

The rest of this post gets personal which is why I am keeping it behind the paywall to keep this discussion within our community.