What if wasting time is the point?
From the Sunday Self-Care Chronicles | 9/13/26
Hey friend,
If you've been reading my emails for a while, you've probably seen some past ones about my family cottage in Muskoka, Ontario. I'm here again closing up for the season, and the lessons this place keeps teaching me feel worth sharing.
This cottage has been in our family for 66 years. Five generations have spent summers here - birthdays, honeymoons, babies' first crawls, lifelong friendships, a few heated arguments, and even the passing and welcoming of pets.
I've only missed one season in my entire life, and when I was young I'd spend entire summers here with my grandparents. So to say it is home is an understatement. It is perhaps more home than any permanent address I've ever had. And because of that, it is probably also the place I feel most myself.
My favorite thing is the old iron glider on our porch. It's held and rocked me for countless mornings of coffee and conversation, late nights watching thunderstorms light up the lake, and long afternoon naps with the clock ticking above my head and no need to think about when I need to wake up.
This weekend I'm two for two on glider naps, with a solid three hours each time. My mom's dog Theo curls up behind my knees. I can hear the windchimes through the screen of the giant picture windows, the breeze moving through the trees, and the other cottagers doing their thing in the distance - a chainsaw somewhere across the water, a boat pulling a skier, the ordinary soundtrack of days that have no agenda other than a bit of choring and more rest.
It is pure heaven. And even when I'm not here, these sounds, sights, and feelings are so ingrained in me that I can recreate them anytime, anywhere. When I go there in my mind, I come home to myself at the same time.
We're closing up a bit earlier than usual this year, and it's always a strange mix of gratitude and grief. The familiar ritual - the putting away, the packing up, the weatherproofing - feels like swaddling a family member before putting her down for a long winter's nap.
And then comes the after. The drive back to the city. The re-entry to life with deadlines and demands. The part where I have to figure out how to carry this feeling into a place that doesn't have a glider on the porch, or a lake outside the window where the water feels unlike any other on earth, or the permission to take a three-hour nap that isn't a sign of fatigue or failure, but simply indulgence.
So here's what I keep thinking about, because it's September and Self-Care Awareness Month:
Self-care isn't the nap itself. It's the permission to take the nap.
It's having a place - even if it's just a chair, even if it's just a corner of your bedroom - where your nervous system goes, "Oh. There you are. I remember you."
For a long time, on this side of my breast cancer diagnosis, I didn't have that. My body felt like a project I was managing, not a home I was living in.
I was showing up for appointments, showing up for everyone else, showing up for the version of myself that was "doing great" - but I wasn't showing up for the part of me that just needed to sit somewhere and hear the wind.
Maybe you know that feeling.
What I've come to realize is that the glider offers me something even deeper than rest. It offers me the chance to waste time. To let a whole afternoon go by with nothing to show for it. To hear Otis Redding in my head - sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time - and think: yes. That. That is the point.
Because after cancer, there is so much pressure to not waste a moment.
To grip every single second for dear life. To turn every experience into meaning, every day into productivity, every breath into a gratitude practice. And I did that for a long time. I thought that was healing.
But what I've learned is that I feel most healed when I can be naive again. When I can take things for granted - a nap, a breeze, a dog behind my knees - without the shadow of knowing it could all be taken away. When I can be normal, even for a brief second. When rest doesn't need a purpose to justify its existence.
The glider gives me that. But here's the part I'm trying to carry home with me this year: I don't need over six decades of family history or a lake in the distance to create that feeling.
I just need a window, or a blanket, or five minutes of not being productive. I need a walk around the block in the sunshine in the middle of a long day at my desk.
I need to stop treating rest like something I earn after the hard work, and start treating it like part of the work itself.
Like it's a part of who I am.
I think that's what active healing actually is.
It's not fixing yourself, or rushing forward, or squeezing meaning out of every single moment so you don't feel like you wasted your second chance.
It's learning how to meet your body somewhere safe and stay there long enough to remember - and maybe also discover - who you are, as you are now.
The cottage will be here next year, or it won't. Theo and I will have more naps, or we won't. I don't know, and I'm trying not to live as if I do.
What I do know is that I'm taking a piece of this porch with me when I go - not the actual glider, but the feeling. The one that says you don't have to be managing, or optimizing, or recovering at any particular speed. The one that says wasting time is not a failure. It's a form of freedom.
You just have to be here. Breathing. Listening to the wind chimes. Letting the afternoon go.
So here's what I'm curious about this Sunday:
When your body asks for more rest than you planned to give, what happens?
Does it feel like a failure, like something you need to justify or earn your way out of? Or are you learning to meet it as a gift you're accepting together - even briefly, even imperfectly?
I know that's a big question. Hit reply if you want to share. I read every one, and your answers help me write these emails closer to where you actually are.
I'm not sure if I'll be three for three on porch naps by the time you read this but, regardless, sitting on the glider writing this email was one of the best parts of my weekend.
Thank you for letting me show up here for you each week.
P.S. My monthly Ask Me Anything call is this Thursday, September 17th at 12:30pm ET. If you want to talk about taking permission to rest, or perhaps been sitting on a body question - scar tissue, lymphedema, or just "is this normal?" - this is your low-pressure space to ask it. Save your seat here.
P.P.S. If you want more insight around the power of rest check out The Nap Ministry. Their work is next level and truly what we need in these exhausting times.
P.P.P.S. If this email found you at a time when rest feels impossible and your body feels like a project you're managing, the As You Are Now program is more than just learning about scars and lymphedema risk. It's built around returning home to yourself - gently, gradually, and as you are. Email me with “tell me more” for details.
The famous “glider” and the view from my naps.