2025 has been relentless. not in a "wow i'm so busy" humbley-braggy typa way, but in a "i genuinely cannot remember the last time i wasn't mentally processing something" way. even my "time off" wasn't really time off. it was just... working from a different location. or catching up on things i'd been putting off. or catching up on sleep after weeks of running on high cortisol.

before i boarded my flight, i decided to go unplugged (figuratively) for 10 days: no laptop, no slack, less email checking. it broke something open in my brain that i didn't know was stuck.

the stuff i noticed

• presence is a skill. i always thought some people were just naturally good at being in the moment and i wasn't one of them. turns out, i'd just never given my brain the actual space to practice it. the first two days i kept reaching for my phone to check... nothing. by day four, i stopped.

• you stop optimizing everything. normally my brain is running background processes 24/7. "is this the best use of my time? should i be doing something else? what's the most efficient way to do this?" on vacation, that voice just... quieted down. i ate when i was hungry. i walked when i felt like walking. i didn't need everything to be productive. it was weird. and kind of wonderful.

• joy requires bandwidth. i'd been going through the motions of fun stuff for months but not actually feeling it. watching shows without really watching. eating good food without really tasting it. turns out my brain was so full of mental tabs that there wasn't enough capacity left over to actually experience things. vacation cleared the cache.

• you come back with perspective, not just memories. the distance from my normal routine let me see patterns i couldn't see while i was in them. which projects actually matter. which stress was self-imposed. which habits were serving me and which ones were just... habits.

why this actually happens

turns out there's actual science behind why real rest feels so different:

• there's this thing called the default mode network located within your brain. it's the part that activates when you're not focused on external tasks. it's where insight happens, where you connect dots, where you process experiences and make meaning from them. but here's the thing: it needs space to work. when you're constantly in "doing" mode, you never let your brain switch into "being" mode, meaning your memories stayed undigested.

• your brain consolidates learning during rest, not during output. it's like trying to save a file while the computer is running 47 other programs. technically possible, but everything's slower and glitchier. rest is when your brain actually writes things to long-term storage.

• burnout is not really about how much you work. it's about lack of recovery. you can handle intense periods if you actually recover from them. but when you never fully recover, it compounds. like sleep debt but for your entire nervous system.

vacation wasn't a pause from real life. it was finally giving my brain the space to actually integrate everything that had happened.

this time around, i really learned that taking real time off isn't indulgent. it's maintenance. and i'm trying to stop treating it like a reward i have to earn and start treating it like the infrastructure that makes everything else work.