Surrendering to the Pause

I’ve been down with the flu for the last 10 days. I’m genuinely shocked — I’ve been proudly, stubbornly healthy for years. The last time I was laid low like this was when I got COVID four summers ago. And yet, even though I’ve been taking excellent care of myself, some part of me suspects this was something I was simply meant to go through right now.

Those who know me well know I tend to be on the move. In Internal Family Systems (IFS) — a framework from modern psychology I find myself returning to — there’s a part of me that is very dominant: the one that keeps me busy, productive, and always moving forward. It’s how I’ve learned to navigate life, to feel like I belong, to feel safe. So whenever I’m forced to slow down, it’s usually a good thing, even if I resist it at first. These enforced pauses are, in their own way, an invitation to release my grip — on my to-do list, on my sense of control, on the illusion that everything depends on me keeping it all in motion.

And this time, I surprised myself. Yes, everything on the list had to wait — the two videos I need to edit for my channel, the stack of business cards from the green build event a few weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to follow up on, a handful of personal projects I’d hoped to knock out. All of it simply… paused. And I let it. More easily than I expected.

What filled that space instead? Honestly — YouTube rabbit holes on a small phone screen. Politics, adorable cat videos, astrology, spiritual teachings, whatever the algorithm decided I needed to see next. At some point I had to laugh at myself: here I was, resting, and yet swimming in an ocean of content that left me feeling more overstimulated than restored. We live in a world so saturated with input that even stillness gets colonized.

But here’s what I came back to, again and again: whatever truly needed to get done, got done. I have been negotiating for a buyer client (mostly from the bed). I did make it to an event in Pasadena to moderate a panel discussion on sustainability, restoration and fire-hardening with respected colleagues. Nothing broke. No one was harmed by my absence. The world kept turning, and I’m on the mend.

Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is simply stop — and discover that stopping was always okay.