The Power of Taking a Break

How it started

How do these kinds of things start? It starts out just like any other thing, I guess. As Mr. Darcy said to Elizabeth Bennet, “I was in the middle before I knew I had begun.” Except I didn’t fall in love; I fell into a midlife crisis. Can you still call it a midlife crisis if you’re still in your twenties? Let’s call it a quarter-life crisis.

I had the job and the apartment. I checked all the boxes and was right on track to get more responsibilities, earn more money, and further my career. Yet somewhere along the way, a little seed of doubt had planted itself deep inside my chest. A few things happened at once. COVID-19 brought the world to a standstill and had a severe impact on my working routine. My relationship with one of my supervisors crumbled, and I lost all motivation at work.

I couldn’t help but think if this was it? This is what people want and work for their entire life? To bust their ass for a boss, only to realize they are nothing more than a cog in the machine that could easily be replaced if you make too much noise? Okay, I’m being a bit dramatic, but let’s just say I wasn’t happy at work anymore. I reached out to my boss for help, and nothing happened.

I’m not one to wallow in self-pity and blame others for my own unhappiness, though, so I took matters into my own hands. And so the story of my crazy adventures began. The funny thing is, once I started taking action to change my life, I felt a million times lighter. I was leaving behind everything I knew and trusted for a chance in the unknown.

How it exploded

Flash forward six months. It literally happened overnight. Even though I know people say that, it still surprised me how accurate that description is. I went to bed feeling good, and I woke up a complete disaster. I’ve woken up feeling like a disaster a few times in my life, but nothing compared to this. I knew immediately that this was serious. Run into a brick wall kind of serious.

The problem was timing. I did not have the time to be fucked up at that moment. I was in Bali, living up to the expectations and fulfilling a long-time dream. For the past six months, I’d been so busy with starting up my freelancing business, quitting my job, moving out of my apartment, and preparing everything for my trip to Bali that I didn’t have time to take a second and breath. I felt good because I was taking action, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I was just ignoring the bigger issue here and it was only a matter of time before it would catch up with me.

And it did. Two months into my Bali trip, I had a breakdown. Just a little one, nothing major, but serious enough to rattle me. Seemingly out of nowhere, I got overwhelmed by what had happened in the past year. It was a combination of burn-out from my previous job, financial insecurity with my new business, missing my friends, and culture shock of being in another country on the other side of the world. I kept asking myself: What the hell are you doing with your life? You are 29 years old; you have no steady income and you’re technically homeless. This is not how you do “adulting”!

Fighting against those doubts is exhausting. It also doesn’t help that many people think exactly that, even if they don’t say it to my face. But like I said, the timing of this breakdown was problematic. I knew it would take some serious time and effort to untangle all this, but I felt too much out of my comfort zone to do it right now.

So I did what any sane person does in such a situation: I told myself I would fix it later on if only I could hold on a little longer. In my case, “a little longer” meant a few weeks until my Bali trip was over. Once I was back home, back in my comfort zone, I could look at all these ugly feelings inside my head.

The best way to ignore something is by working really hard and forgetting about everything else. Luckily for me, it was near graduation time and lots of students needed help to proofread their essays and thesis. I had no shortage of assignments and went full steam ahead. Just a little bit longer, right?

The struggle of slowing down

As you might already suspect, that “just a little bit longer” turned into a bit more longer. My brief vacation back home was actually three weeks of running around and doing as much as possible in the short time I was there. This meant there was no time to take a break or slow down in any way. Fortunately, I already had a Plan B: use my time in Lisbon to figure all this shit out.  

I never realized how difficult it could be to slow down. I’m a pretty lazy person, I’m not afraid to admit that, so I know what it’s like to be a couch potato for a few days and do absolutely nothing, but it’s so much more different if you have to force yourself.

My head had gotten into a routine of running at 200%. All. The. Time. Now that I look back on it, I wasn’t even that productive. My mind went into major overdrive, but my brain couldn’t keep up. I made mistakes. I forgot assignments and missed deadlines. I did everything to just keep going, but my body was telling me I needed to take a break.

So how do you go from being that to a complete stop? The hard way. I took on no new assignments and gave myself no obligations. Forcing yourself to relax has the opposite effect. The very fact that you have to force yourself makes it impossible to relax in any kind of way. I, however, am excellent at lying to myself. I can fool myself into pretty much anything. It was about time that I used that unique talent for something good.

I didn’t tell myself to relax and have fun. Instead, I told myself the same thing every day: you don’t have to do anything today. If you want, you can lie on your bed and do absolutely nothing. You don’t have to, but you could if you wanted to. It sounds so simple, but still, I had to keep reminding myself every day. It’s then that I realized how brainwashed I was to always be productive and contribute to society.

When I wanted to take a walk, the first thing that came to mind was that I didn’t have the time. No, you don’t have to do anything today. You can take that walk. So I took that walk. I wanted to know what happened in the next chapter of the book I was reading, but I couldn’t because I still had to… No. You don’t have to do anything today. You can take the time to read. Every day, I had to slow myself down.

The reward

I feel stupid writing it down like this, but I cannot believe how much a few weeks of taking a break changed me. Not the first two weeks. The first two weeks were a constant battle against my instincts. Slowing down meant I finally had the time to stop and breathe.

Everything I’d been avoiding these past few years came rushing to the forefront of my mind. There’s nothing you can do against such an onslaught of feelings. You just have to let them wash over you and hope you don’t drown. These were the kind of feelings that demand to be felt before you can turn them into something positive. So I felt a lot those first few weeks.

And then things calmed down. It’s not that I was suddenly “cured” and all happy again, but I did manage to find a sense of calmness inside myself. I still do not know what the hell I’m doing with my life or where I’m going, but that’s okay. I am figuring it out. I was unhappy and now I’m taking action to find a more fulfilling life. It might take me a few more months or even years, but I am confident I’ll get there.

I am now in the after-Lisbon stage. All my worries are exactly the same as in the before-Lisbon stage, but I decided not to be overwhelmed anymore. Life is always overwhelming. The trick to surviving it is cutting the overwhelming feeling down into little, manageable steps. I am worried about my financial situation? Find 1 more reliable client this month. I don’t know where I want to live? Pick a country and book your next trip. (Spoiler alert: Sweden). The world is going too fast and I can’t keep up? Take a social media detox and pick up a new book.

I haven’t found all the answers yet, but I did find my confidence again. If you ask me, that’s even better.