Ever since I flew out of the Philippines in 2015, I have been hustling.

When I was in Singapore, almost 3 times a week we were doing 2-3 hour gigs after work or during weekends. When we came here in 2016, I found a side hustle that really required me to work 4-5 hours more at night and it has been going on until last week. So for the last 3 years, I’ve been working almost non-stop. Then suddenly, I felt that I needed to rest.

I used to feel guilty whenever I rest, I feel that I don’t deserve to rest because my dreams won’t wait for me. Rest is for the weak.

Money was the main motivation why I work for almost 12-18 hours a day. I want to have more money on-hand, in my investments, and for emergencies. I traded quality time with my family for money and I tell myself, I’m doing all of this for them. Suddenly, it hit me… How much money do I really need before I stop working my ass off?

We have more than enough for our monthly needs, we can buy things out of impulse which we cannot do before, we can travel if we wanted to but here I am working like there’s no tomorrow, working like there’ll never be another opportunity, working like I’m always running out of money.

I decided to rest… For now. Not because I don’t need the money, not because I’m tired, not because there’s no more opportunity. I decided to rest because I deserve it and for the first time in a long time, I feel contented

What’s my point? We work too much to earn money, we sacrifice quality time in exchange for a better future, future that we may or may not experience. We are never contented. We say we are, but we’ll never be and it’s not bad. We have dreams we want to achieve, we have people relying on us, we have a calling that we need to fulfill, but, we also need to rest, we also need a break. The next time you feel guilty about resting, tell yourself that you deserve it. Don’t mistake complacency with being content. Being contented is being happy, being complacent is being lazy. Rest is not for the weak but for the deserving.

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