On the first Monday of the spring semester, I woke up at 9am and instinctively reached for my laptop. It has been paused. I have no meetings anywhere and have no obligation to oppose the time constraints of the day. After nearly four years of academic anxiety, awareness should have been freed, but instead, getting off the treadmill that hadn’t stopped moving made me feel uneasy.
In the upper semester of the spring semester, the course load has been reduced after completing majors and minors, so what tensions should be done in the coming months was quickly announced. I thought this free time was meant to feel secure, but in reality it felt like a gap that needs to be met.
Especially in places like Berkeley, California, where the surrounding peers radiate with ambition, the implicit mantra is not only successful, but constantly moving. As long as you’re driving on hamster wheels, it’s what everything should be like. However, the moment you descend for a breather, you risk questioning why you are running in the first place.
For me, there is a quiet sense of security in enduring busyness. If your schedule is packed, your inbox is overflowing with press information, your body is thin between deadlines and commitments, you have to do the right thing. right? In Berkeley, California, I realized that rest is not necessary, but luxurious. Even in moments of fatigue, there is comfort in knowing that you are part of a shared rhythm.
I’ve been stationary for the past few weeks, and lacking many overlapping deadlines and obligations, I have contemplated questions that I couldn’t ask myself or were too busy to even think about . Faced with mass productivity, what part of you ignored? The answer is something I have been working on over the past few weeks.
It may sound extreme on my part, but there is something really radical about embracing leisure in a world that requires constant movement. So the other day I sat in bed until the afternoon and watched the light move over time. There’s no email, no do, no urgent notices, no simple relaxation. In these final months before I set out into the “real world,” I am working on learning how to exist in silence rather than finding a way to fill it.
