- 10 Dec, 2025 *
In May, I stopped working. I needed a pause, a real one, and I finally had the courage to take it. Seven months later, I’m exactly where I hoped I’d be: slowing down, taking my time, letting the days unfold without pressure.
I expected boredom to hit at some point, but it never really did. My days fill themselves with small things, and time slides by in a way I don’t fully understand. Apparently doing nothing is strangely time-consuming.
What has appeared, though, is guilt. A steady, low-grade guilt for not producing anything useful. For not “making the most” of my days. For simply existing without output. I expected it a little while staying at my mum’s, doing very little. But I felt the same guilt while planning our next sailing to Greenland. Which is absu…
- 10 Dec, 2025 *
In May, I stopped working. I needed a pause, a real one, and I finally had the courage to take it. Seven months later, I’m exactly where I hoped I’d be: slowing down, taking my time, letting the days unfold without pressure.
I expected boredom to hit at some point, but it never really did. My days fill themselves with small things, and time slides by in a way I don’t fully understand. Apparently doing nothing is strangely time-consuming.
What has appeared, though, is guilt. A steady, low-grade guilt for not producing anything useful. For not “making the most” of my days. For simply existing without output. I expected it a little while staying at my mum’s, doing very little. But I felt the same guilt while planning our next sailing to Greenland. Which is absurd because sailing to Greenland is basically the opposite of doing nothing. It’s logistics, cold, risk, preparation. Work, in its own way.
So why the guilt?
Because I’m doing it for myself. There’s no societal contribution hidden in the icebergs. And somewhere deep inside, I seem to believe that doing something purely for personal pleasure is suspicious, almost illegitimate. That belief has been with me for a long time. Since childhood, really.
I was the responsible kid who made lunch, accompanied my mum on her rounds, went shopping with my dad. My brother joked I was “ready to marry” by age ten. No one asked me to be that child. I just realised early that being “useful” earned me praise, and I built myself around it. Productivity and impact became the measures of worth.
I’m starting to question that. I don’t know if it ever truly served me, or if it simply kept me busy and validated.
Letting it go is not peaceful. It feels like unhooking a safety line. The guilt peels back to reveal fear: fear of being nothing, of losing any claim to value. Standing in front of that empty space is terrifying.
Maybe the issue isn’t productivity. Maybe it’s that I don’t yet know who I am without it.
And now, for the first time, I’m giving myself the chance to find out.