Rest From What?

Why I don't recognize my own life as work, and why resting feels like agreeing to stay exactly who I am

What happened

Someone told me to rest this week. To stop thinking about work. To enjoy the day, because it was beautiful outside.

I said no. Not out loud, but in my head, immediately: rest from what?

There’s a story I keep coming back to, about Sergio Marchionne, one of the people I admire most. When he took over Fiat in Italy, he walked into the office in August and found nobody there. He asked, where is everybody? They told him, on vacation. And he said: vacation from what? We’re losing a million dollars a day, and people are on vacation. Vacation from what?

That’s exactly how I feel about myself. Every time someone tells me to rest, I hear the same question in my own head. Rest from what?

And then, this Saturday, something smaller happened that explained the bigger thing to me.

I was driving. Not in the office, not in the kitchen, not at the store. And I caught myself recording a voice memo of ideas for this newsletter, and the first thought I had was: I should stop doing this and actually work. As if what I was doing wasn’t work. As if thinking, planning, building, was something I was allowed to do only after the real work was finished.

Except I was working. I just didn’t recognize it as work, because it didn’t look like the work I grew up watching.

What I thought it meant

For a long time I thought the resting problem meant something was wrong with me. That I didn’t know how to receive kindness. That when people offered me permission to slow down and I rejected it, I was either lying to them or they were wrong about who I am.

Because here is the thing: people look at me and see someone successful. Someone who works hard, who has built something real, who deserves a break. And I look at the same person and see someone who is still at the beginning. My business should be bigger by now. It should be working in a different way. I should have more money. I should have invested better. I should have the relationship I want. None of that is true yet, so how could I possibly be the person they’re describing?

I used to think this made me a fraud. Like I was cheating people out of their compliments. Like if they really knew how far I still am from where I’m supposed to be, they would take the rest, take the kindness, take the praise, and give it to someone who actually earned it.

I’m tired of tracing everything back to childhood, but apparently we carry it forever, so let me trace this one anyway.

My father worked every day. Eight in the morning to eight, eight thirty at night. Including Saturday mornings, Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons. The only real time off was one week in December and three or four weeks in August, because in Italy most businesses close for the month and there was nowhere to be but closed with them. We took one vacation a year. Ten days. Beach or mountains. Never a random weekend away, because a random weekend away meant the business was being neglected, and the business being neglected meant something terrible was about to happen. When he wasn’t in the office, he was traveling the world for work, and sometimes he took me with him, which is a whole other story for another week.

So the equation got built early, before I had any say in it: working means being physically present somewhere, doing something that costs you. If you are not there, suffering a little, you are not working. And if it doesn’t cost you anything, it definitely doesn’t count.

What I think now

I live in a different country now. I run a different kind of business. Most of what I do doesn’t require me to be in any specific place, except teaching, where I actually do have to be in the kitchen. I know this, logically. And yet there is a part of me that still discounts what I am doing in this exact moment, recording an idea in the car, as not-real-work, because it doesn’t match the picture I inherited.

There’s a second layer underneath that one, and it took me longer to see it. I don’t feel like I’m working when I love what I’m doing. So when people tell me to stop working, I tell them I’m not. I’m “just” recording a newsletter idea. I’m “just” teaching a class.

Last night I covered a cooking class I wasn’t even supposed to teach. I complain about being on the teaching schedule, not because I don’t enjoy it, but because every hour in that kitchen feels like an hour I’m not spending moving the business forward, and that builds a quiet frustration in me. But the second I start teaching, I am the happiest person on earth. I give it everything I have. I’m good at it. It took me ten years to get this good, and it is part of my identity now, even though I still struggle to just say that plainly, out loud, without qualifying it.

When the class ended, I stayed two extra hours making sure everything was put back exactly right. Then someone asked me what I did last night, and I said, “oh, I just taught a class.” Not, “I worked.” Two extra hours of unpaid, unasked-for care, and in my own mouth it became nothing.

It happens with recipes too. I always say I don’t like writing them. I love sharing them, but sitting down to nail the exact measurements feels like a chore, something I avoid. Except that’s not entirely true either. When I actually have the time to do it properly, I enjoy it, because I love precision, I love getting a thing exactly right. The truth is I never have the time anymore, which means by now someone else should probably be writing my recipes for me. But I haven’t let go of that one yet, because some part of me still believes that if it’s enjoyable, it shouldn’t be delegated. Real work is the part that hurts. The rest is just me having fun on company time.

So here is the connection I didn’t see until this week. The reason I can’t rest, and the reason I don’t recognize half of what I do as work, are the same belief wearing two different outfits.

I don’t have the money I think I should have yet, because I haven’t fully become the person who knows how to make it, manage it, and accept that she’s allowed to have it. I don’t have the business I want yet, because I haven’t become the person who runs that kind of business. I don’t have the relationship I want, because somewhere in me there is still a belief that I’m not enough to be loved the way I want to be loved.

And if work only counts when it’s unpleasant and visible and costs me something, then almost nothing I actually do counts. Teaching doesn’t count, because I love it. Recording ideas in the car doesn’t count, because nobody can see me doing it. Even building this newsletter doesn’t fully count some days, because it doesn’t feel like suffering, it feels like exhaling. So if none of that counts as work, then I haven’t worked enough to deserve the things I want. And if I haven’t worked enough to deserve the things I want, I definitely haven’t worked enough to deserve a day off.

That’s the whole trap, in one sentence. I built a definition of work so narrow that almost nothing I do fits inside it, and then I punish myself with rest I refuse to take, for work I refuse to count.

So when I say I haven’t worked hard enough, what I actually mean is: I haven’t become her yet. The version of me who has the business, the money, the relationship, the life, and who also believes that joy can be productive. And until I do, my nervous system won’t let me rest, because resting feels like agreeing to stay exactly who I am right now.

I still believe everything happens at the right time, when we’re actually ready for it. Not when we want it. When we’re built for it. I think I’m in the process of being built. That doesn’t make the waiting comfortable. But it makes it make sense.

What I’m practicing

I’m practicing telling myself: I don’t have it yet. Not, I don’t have it. Yet changes everything. It turns a verdict into a timeline.

I’m practicing calling things work, out loud, even when they were easy or joyful or invisible to everyone but me. Last night I taught a class. I worked. This morning I recorded an idea in the car. I worked.

I’m practicing separating the part of me that pushes hard because it’s building something, from the part of me that pushes hard because it doesn’t believe it’s allowed to stop. Those two things look identical from the outside. They are not the same thing.

And I’m practicing letting people call me successful without arguing with them. Not because I’ve decided they’re right. Just because I’m done correcting people about my own life.

Question for you

What do you do all day that you’ve quietly stopped calling work, because it didn’t hurt enough or look enough like the work you grew up watching?

And underneath that: what are you still telling yourself you haven’t earned yet, that you might actually just not have grown into yet?

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Every week, I write one honest lesson from building a business, becoming the person my future keeps asking me to be, and figuring out, slowly, what I’m actually worthy of. Subscribe if you want to follow along.