Rest and Feeding

I once had a friend who was mad at her tomato plants. “It’s so weird,” she complained. “I’m watering like usual, and I planted them in the same sunny spot where I’ve grown tomatoes the last two years, so I know they’re in a good location. Nothing changed. They just stopped producing!”

The tomato gardeners reading this already have an idea what was going on. Tomato plants give a lot——a single plant can grow several pounds of delicious, versatile, nutrient packed food for our summer tables——but they take a lot from the soil to do it. They’re what’s known as “heavy feeders.” If you don’t feed them or move their location each year as part of an intentional crop rotation, they’ll quickly deplete the soil they’re in and eventually stop producing.

Today is my first day back after closing Salmonberry down for two weeks to end 2024 and begin 2025. Periodic closure is a practice I want to continue, even as the business grows into something bigger than me. I want to avoid a culture of post-vacation scrambles to catch up on missed work and build a culture, right from the start, where it’s okay for the work itself to stop sometimes.

This is a shift from typical American work culture, which can be a lot like my friend’s garden. That culture wants productivity without rotating out or replenishing, without feeding or rest. And when people are working sick, burning out, hospitalized with exhaustion and struggling with mental health, that culture reacts like there’s something mysteriously wrong with the people. “It’s so weird! Nothing changed. Why have they stopped producing?!”

It gives me hope to see more of us pushing back as we realize that people are always going to struggle in a culture that treats rest as a privilege, and that’s not a poor reflection on them. It the culture that needs to change, and we’re trying out cultural changes like embracing periodic closures, rolling out four day work-weeks, and implementing sabbatical policies. I think we need to keep dreaming bigger, but these ideas feel like good starting points——they feel like seeds. I’m happy to see them growing and happy to support them however I can.

Today, on my first day back to work, I signed a new contract to serve as interim co-director for a small nonprofit that’s implementing a sabbatical policy for the first time. For those not familiar with the term, a sabbatical is an extended period away from work (usually for rest and reflection). I’ll be filling in while the organization's founder is on a much needed 8-week break. I was honored to walk alongside the organization to research and draft the policy as they prepared, and now I’m excited to help shepherd the work more directly in this interim role.

I look forward to writing more about what we learn together in the weeks ahead. For now, I’ll just share one thing that surprised me about this whole process, which was the way everyone——staff and board——started from a place of curiosity and possibility. This is a scrappy little organization with all the inherent funding and resource challenges of small orgs, but they asked, “How can we?” where others would likely say, “We can’t.” I’m proud of them for deciding the need and the benefits were compelling enough to ask for help and figure it out.

More of that from more of us, and we’d see our culture shifting for the better.

Meanwhile, my reflection this week is on this quote from the system’s thinker, Margaret J. Wheatley, which my friend Kathy reminded me of last week. “I know it is possible to create islands of sanity in the midst of wildly disruptive seas.” I see rest and feeding as islands of sanity in the wildly disruptive seas we’ll certainly have to navigate this year. As I seek those islands of sanity and seek to be an island of sanity for others, I’ll be asking, "How I can find more opportunities to rest and feed myself?" "How I can contribute to the rest and feeding of others?"

Where will you find your islands of sanity this month? What is feeding you? Where will you find rest?

If you want to share your thoughts on this reflection, talk about rest, or learn more about sabbaticals, reach out. As always, I’d love to hear from you.