Just One Sock.
What to do when you can't do anything. 🧦
I’m trying not to fall asleep while I write this.
On top of increasingly frustrating fatigue issues I’ve been working with doctors to diagnose over the last year, I now have a pre-holiday cold that has flattened me. (Do you ever just know the exact moment when you get sick? I truly felt a brigade of germs cartwheel into my body during a raucous Karaoke night last weekend.) So, while I scramble to wrap up work and emails before the holidays, prepare the house for our relatives coming for Christmas, and frantically buy last-minute gifts, I’m fighting for my life to stay awake. Dealing with exhaustion is exhausting.
Historically speaking, I’ve always been a baseline, highly productive, extremely energetic person. Those character traits have defined me - for better or worse - my entire life. I’m that friend, that employee, bouncing around with seemingly bottomless energy, juggling tons of projects at any given moment, saying yes to everyone…. that is, until I completely and totally burn myself out. It’s an unhealthy cycle I’m working to rewire.
Like many people (especially women), I have significant issues with equating my value with my output. More productivity = a better, more likable person. The problem is that defining yourself and your worth by your productivity is a slippery slope to constant disappointment. It’s not sustainable or rewarding, and you end up resenting your commitments, community, and yourself.
I watched my mother struggle with productivity her entire life, burning herself out trying to juggle fifty million projects at any given moment. While she never directly said out loud that production equaled value, I internalized this early on, witnessing her behavior. I watched her “manage” her insomnia by inhaling books and rearranging the furniture. I witnessed years of what I now understand to be a lack of boundaries while she helped every friend who asked, whether she had the bandwidth or not. I subconsciously thought, “This is how it works. You say yes and take on more and more until you physically cannot anymore and the damn bursts. That’s what it’s supposed to look like, right?”
Obviously, it’s not, but we mimic what we see growing up. And I know countless other women working through the same ideology, having watched their own mothers try to live up to society’s insane and unrealistic “have-it-all” standards.
It’s taken years of therapy, self-improvement books, and other outlets to begin undoing this deeply rooted internal narrative. To retrain my brain out of believing my worth is based on my output, creative accomplishments, busy social calendar and overflowing to-do list. This is not a sustainable way to live.
My therapist and I have been working on mantras and coping mechanisms to retrain my mind. The main one is “I am enough.” Period. No caveats about being blank enough, or I am enough IF… Just plain and simple, I am ok, right now, as I am, with what I’ve accomplished. Other ones include My Worth is Not Defined by My Output. Done is better than Good. And, of course, Don’t Let Perfect be the Enemy of Good.
But I have another phrase that helps me when feeling particularly run down: Just One Sock.
Let me explain.
Years ago, while struggling with this issue, my shrink said that on days when we are lower — lower energy, lower steam, lower bandwidth — we need to adjust our barometer for success. “Some days,” she said, “the only thing you can do is pick up a single sock off the floor. But that IS enough.” I’ve called them one sock days ever since.
Today, as I lie in bed surrounded by Kleenex and empty tea mugs, looking at my cat apologetically for disturbing her with my constant sneezing, this newsletter is my sock. It’s the one thing I’m going to get done today, and I’m off the hook. (Why do I even feel ON the hook for anything while I’m sick? I dunno, ask my low-level childhood trauma and our toxic capitalist society.) EVEN THOUGH I rationally understand that the exhaustion I’m feeling is clinical, medical, and 100% not my fault, I still internally feel lazy. Like I should be able to just perk the fuck up and get out of bed.
So let’s talk about rest.
In her book Sacred Rest, author and physician Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith discusses what she describes as the seven types of rest: Physical, Mental, Emotional, Sensory, Creative, Social, and Spiritual.
Intersectional Environmentalist recently shared some graphics outlining these forms of rest that I loved and wanted to share:
What I love about this concept of seven different types of rest is how it validates the complexity of our needs. Rest isn’t one-size-fits-all, and it’s not something we “earn” after a long day. It’s essential, varied, and personal. It’s about recognizing what kind of replenishment you need at the moment. Whether it’s creative rest to reignite the imagination or physical rest to let the body recover, I’m beginning to (finally) see rest as an active, intentional practice. It doesn’t come easily, but I’m determined to embrace it, even if it’s just one sock at a time.
It will shock no one that the idea of creative rest particularly compelled me—needing a beat between creative projects, requiring time to marinate on ideas, taking time to reset and reboot. I’m a week “late” on this newsletter because I haven’t had the juice. I’ve been beating myself up about it, but instead, I’m just going to meet myself where I am and move forward.
So here I am, on a one-sock day, staring down the chaos of the holidays and this seemingly eternal exhaustion. But I wrote this. I made it to the mat. I picked up the sock. And while I still feel the tug of old internal patterns telling me it’s not enough, I’m learning to quiet those voices. Rest is enough. Showing up is enough. I am enough.
It’s not a perfect journey (because nothing is), but it’s a step. And maybe that’s the whole point: redefining success, one sock at a time.
I need more one sock days lol