Give Me a Break!

If there’s one thing I struggle with on a daily basis, it is perhaps... No… It is DEFINITELY giving myself a break. It’s like, every time I take a break there’s this condescending voice in my head that says “Who the fuck are you to think you deserve to give yourself a break? Now, get your ass up and get back at whatever it is you’re supposed to do!”

Yeah, no joke!

If you’re like this too, then we are in the same battle.

My brain - and pretty much every single cell in me - seems to be programmed to not recognize having a break. This, of course, has a lot to do with how I was raised.

My Dad was a hard worker. So much so, that half an hour before he took his dying breath, what he did was he sent a message to his work team to remind them that there was going to be a team meeting the next day. I know, right?! Don’t get it twisted though, he was far from being a workaholic. He knew how to spend time with his family whenever he had the chance to. He was just a very dedicated man.

One of the memories that is stuck in my head and one that, later in life, I realized is the root of me not being able to take a break is of this one time when we went to the mall. Dad and I were sitting on this bench in front of a clothing store while my Mom was diving deep into this cart filled with half-priced branded clothes when he said “Do you notice that there are two kinds of people that visit the mall?”

Me, being an oblivious teenager at the time, obviously didn’t notice what he meant. He then resumed basically saying the two kinds of people are visitors and shoppers. He continued explaining between the two. Visitors are those who come to the mall to window shop and go home without anything in hand, not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t afford it. Shoppers are, you guessed it, the ones like my Mom. The ones who enter almost every single store that exist at the mall and splurge.

He ended his visitors vs shoppers speech with a question that pretty much transformed me into this working machine once I entered the real world. The world where we are obligated to pay bills and having money is a standard of success. Isn’t adulting fucking wonderful?!

“Which one are you going to be?”

You see, my Dad grew up poor. His parents didn’t have a lot of money and between my Dad and his 10 other siblings, his parents had to make ends meet. So when my Dad got the chance to work at a bonafide airline company as an engineer, he swore he was going to turn his life around. His definition of success was having a house, a car, savings, work 9-5 at a prestigious company with the hope that one day he would become one of the top tiers - and he did -. And the way he knew how to do all that was to work hard, even if it meant only having one day off in a week and sometimes had to do overtime.

The question that he asked me pretty much still haunts me to this day. On one side, I really admired my Dad’s determination in achieving success. I learned that hard work pays off. But on the other side, I feel like there’s this pressure in me to be as successful as my Dad using the method he used.

Okay, yes, I get it. How my Dad defined success then is totally different from the definition of success now. People have different ways of defining success now. It’s not about having a house, a car, and a jillion savings in the bank anymore - if this is your definition of success, kudos to you, btw -. Personally, success for me is doing something that makes me happy while making that little changes to make the world a better place, and the people around me and/or my clients are happy with what I deliver.

However, there’s still that pressure that I at least have to be on par with my Dad, in terms of hard work. I always feel the need to do something and/or work on something in order to feel productive. Sadly, there were times that my definition of productive equals sitting in front of my laptop and work my ass off. The funny thing about that is now that I’m working as a freelance, which logically allows me to have the freedom of managing my own time, I still pressure myself to work 8 hours a day (sometimes more), 9-5, Monday to Friday. If I don’t do this, then there’s this guilt creeping inside of me, punishing me for not being “productive”.

The fucked up thing is every time this guilt creeps in, I would always feel inadequate, lazy like I’m wasting my time. This is why it’s really hard for me to give myself permission to take a break. Taking a break means not being productive and not being productive means I’ll end up being a visitor at a mall. Not that I like going to the mall, but you know what I mean.

My Disappointment Panda said to me earlier, as I was giving him attitude, projecting my frustration for deciding to take a break from work today because I felt like my energy level is low. He said “Keep in mind that the more well-rested you are, the better your work output will be, too. So, win-win”

What he said really slapped me in the face, even though I still whined the whole time we were talking and was still projecting my frustration onto him. But it makes so much sense. There’s no point in pushing myself too hard, it’s going to burn me out. And when I burn out, I will not be able to deliver my work which will eventually lead me to a torturous down spiral. That is a spiral none of us would want to go into. Believe me!

In the midst of wanting to work hard to achieve what I want in life, I seem to have forgotten that taking a break is also a part of that hard work. It’s a part of being productive in the first place. It’s like giving your smartphone a break from your endless scrolling through social media, or whatever it is you do with your phone, no judgment here, and charging it when the battery is low. You can’t really do much with a dead phone. It won’t function the way it is supposed to.

BOOYAH!!! Insert celebration emoji here.

My Dad, as wise as he was, only knew the one thing he was supposed to do. To work hard to become successful. His past experience shaped him that way. A work machine who does not recognize the term “take a break” in his dictionary. And that was in no way a fault of his, nor it was his fault when he asked me that question that caused me to become who I am today. That method worked on him, but it is not working for me, therefore clearly something needs to change.

Giving yourself permission is 100% crucial in whatever goals you’re trying to achieve. I know it’s not easy as it sounds. You might be thinking, as I do whenever I give myself a little break, while the whole world is doing something and you’re there being a couch potato, binge-watching your favorite series on Netflix. What the fuck, right?! But hey, if that’s really what you need, then do it. As long as the reason why you’re doing it is not that you’re avoiding your responsibility, fucking do it! Work is still going to be there when you’re ready to get back at it, it’s not going anywhere.

I’m still on a long journey of practicing what I preach here, not gonna lie. So this blog post also acts as a reminder for me too. To take that break whenever I need it, not worry about anything else, give myself 100% permission to have that break.

Today was a victory because despite the whining and feeling guilty about giving myself a break, I was able to somehow tell my thoughts to fuck off and gave myself a well-needed rest. But there are going to be days where it’s going to be difficult for me to take a break and I will have to suffer the consequences.

But guess what, when those days happen, I shall not see it as a failure, but merely a setback from my growth journey.

Can I get an amen up in here?!