Columnist Joanna Buoniconti: Learning the importance of taking breaks

Joanna Buoniconti

Joanna Buoniconti

Albrecht Fietz/via Pixabay

Albrecht Fietz/via Pixabay Albrecht Fietz/via Pixabay

By JOANNA BUONICONTI

Published: 02-04-2025 7:46 AM

As I write this, I am sitting at my desk working late into the night for the 20th or so consecutive night. Not because I’m a glamorous singer like Sabrina Carpenter, but because I’m trying to balance my new internship at a literary agency — where I sincerely hope to get hired someday — along with allocating time for my freelance editing responsibilities, for writing this column and for nursing issues sprinkled in. It’s safe to say that January has been a relatively hectic month.

The unfortunate truth, at the heart of the matter here, is that up to six months ago, this level of chaos had been normal for almost two years straight, while I completed my master’s degree as well as six internships, simultaneously.

In case any of you wondered, why yes, I do have a very hard time sitting still. And it’s a pretty consistent topic of conversation in my biweekly therapy sessions.

However, between Thanksgiving and Christmas of this past year I took almost a complete month off from work. But it was not entirely voluntary. It only happened because I had gotten a horrible cold, and my body could not physically tolerate sitting up in my chair for as long as usual. This lasted for weeks and was miserable for me in many ways.

As we established several paragraphs earlier, I have a difficult time being alone with my own thoughts. And because my body had tapped out, I had no choice. But I had a realization: Taking a break is beneficial, every once in a while.

This may be common sense to most people, but for someone who has defined productivity for years as getting all of the tasks that you wanted to do done in a designated amount of time, I assure you it’s not an easy concept to internalize. I believe I’ve mentioned this in a previous column, but it bears repeating in this context because for a long time, I tied my self-worth to how productive I could be on any given day.

For most of my life, I have been convinced that working hard and continuously putting my nose to the grindstone would get me where I wanted to be in life and my career.

When I was younger, this was a point of contention between my mom and me because when I was sick, I would prioritize my schoolwork over my respiratory routines. I can vividly remember having this notion that if I just worked hard enough, it would be the only way for me to get what I wanted.

Little did I know that maintaining that philosophy would only cause me to experience burnout.

Coincidentally, before Thanksgiving of last year, I had hit a literal wall in my career trajectory. I had a parting of ways with an author, with whom I had worked for two years on his book pro bono, and I had gotten a brutal rejection from Penguin Random House for an internship for which I had spent months applying — and preparing for. Either of these events would have been a blow on their own, but they happened within three days of each other and, to put it mildly, it was a substantial blow that left me reeling.

I had put a lot of time and energy into both of these experiences, and it was the first time I had come head-to-head with the realization that working hard sometimes just isn’t enough. Taking a brief step back during that month allowed me the opportunity that I needed to regroup, both physically and emotionally.

And, to be honest, it was kind of a relief. It allowed me to just be for a little bit. And I got accepted to a new internship in the process.

Don’t get me wrong, though. It was not easy for me to take a step back, especially at first. In fact, it was quite difficult. Because when I have tried to take breaks in the past, I have always had this incessant nagging voice in the back of my head reminding me of all of the things that I could be doing instead of resting or relaxing.

But during my monthlong respite, I had a revelation that taking some time away allowed me to hit the ground running with my new internship and to come back stronger with my other responsibilities.

I’m still very much working on finding the time and space to take breaks during the day, because my instinct is to just keep working to overcompensate for the fact that my condition prevents me from typing as fast as my peers.

But that is not healthy, and I’m slowly coming to the realization that part of being productive is taking a little time off.

Gazette columnist Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently pursuing her master’s at Emerson College. She can be reached at columnist@gazettenet.com.