My Baseline Is Always Tired

By Sarah Kozlowski

In the weeks leading up to my trip to France, I spent more time convincing myself I could actually leave than I did packing. My employer is encouraging about time off — genuinely, wonderfully so — and yet there I was, the one standing in my own way. Making sure every loose end was tied. Every handoff documented. Every "just in case" scenario accounted for. As if the whole operation might simply cease to exist the moment I boarded a plane.

I know I'm not alone in this. And I also know how lucky I am that the barrier was internal. Not everyone has a workplace that actually respects vacation boundaries and unplugging. That's not lost on me.

But knowing you have permission and truly giving yourself permission are two very different things.

So I made a decision before this trip. A real one. No emails. No PTO approvals. No answering the client text that came through on a Tuesday afternoon somewhere over the Atlantic. I forwarded it. I let someone else handle it. And I want to be honest with you: it was liberating in a way I wasn't fully prepared for. Not because the world didn't keep spinning — it did, effortlessly, without me — but because I let it. For maybe the first time in a long time, I let it.

While on my trip, someone asked me about jetlag. I waved it off, said it hadn't been too bad. And then, almost immediately, I heard myself add: "...or maybe that's because my baseline is always tired."

I meant it as a throwaway joke. I laughed. People laughed. We moved on.

But it stuck with me. It's still sticking.

My baseline is always tired. When did that become just... a fact about me? A personality trait I report casually over dinner? And more importantly — why? Why is the default setting for so many of us a low-grade, persistent exhaustion that we've simply normalized?

We live in a world that demands we're always on. At work. At home. Actively, consciously participating in the world around us in an effort to be ethical, responsible, caring members of society. And all of that is good. All of that matters. But somewhere in the relentlessness of it, rest became a reward we had to earn — and one most of us never quite feel like we deserve.

The moments I felt most like myself on this trip weren't the wine tastings or the sweeping views along the Dordogne and Garonne rivers — though those were pretty spectacular. They were the late nights after dinner, playing cards with my mom and sisters in the ship's lounge, nightcap in hand, nowhere to be and nothing to prove. No one needed anything from me. I wasn't managing or anticipating or performing. I was just a daughter, a sister, laughing over a card game on a boat in Bordeaux.

It sounds so simple. It was so simple. And that's exactly the point.

So I've been sitting with a question since I got home: Is rest rebellion?

Maybe. But I don't think it has to be framed that way to matter. I think it can just be sacred — as necessary and non-negotiable as eating, as sleeping, as breathing. Because real rest goes beyond all of those things. It's the kind that quiets the part of your brain that's always making the list, running the numbers, anticipating the need before it arrives.

I'm still figuring out how to protect it now that I'm home. Now that the inbox has refilled and the calendar has stacked back up. But I think the first step is saying out loud — to myself as much as anyone — that rest is not laziness. It's not a reward for finally doing enough.

It's something you need. And sometimes, you have to go all the way to France to remember that.