Take a Break: Recharge Your Batteries with a Day in Bed

Credit: Lhoretsë

Feel fresh as a flower after you take a day to repine

One of the best ways I know of to recharge your batteries when you’re feeling the weight of the world is to spend the day in bed.

No, not like that, you pervert. I’m talking a whole day spent in between the sheets, a day in which you read, maybe watch a movie, eat a number of snacks, crumbs on the duvet and all, call your friends and generally live your life horizontal.

A Day in Bed: A Sure Cure for the Out of Sorts

I discovered the pleasures of a day in bed when I began experiencing vague malaise. I wouldn’t have any symptoms to speak of — no runny nose or itchy throat — just the feeling of being unable to cope, a deep, bone-crushing fatigue, and the urge to crawl under a rock and hide from it all. Invariably, if I ignored the early signs, I’d get sick in earnest.

Eventually it occurred to me that feeling wan was my body’s way of signalling the need for a break. Nipping that ennui in the bud with a day in bed, it turned out, forestalled a longer spell fighting off flu or other gruesome ailments later.

What Else Can You Do in Bed? Lots

In an ideal world, you’d spend a day in bed as a prophylactic measure every couple of weeks or so. Morning with the traditional newspaper and croissant would morph into a lunch of odds gathered from the fridge, from Brie and olives to little bits of cold leftovers. In the afternoon you’d chat with pals you hadn’t spoken to in way too long, and make plans to get together next weekend over an actual dinner cooked at somebody’s house.

Pizza and a Movie

Tonight, though, the menu would be simpler: delivery pizza with wine, snuggling in front of a black-and-white movie from the 1940s if you’re paired up or if alone, with Sex and the City reruns. Your day in bed would include beauty treatments (mask, moisturizer, pedicure) and, best of all, grandiose plans for the future — the job you’re going to get, the novel you’re going to write, the places you’ll live. Doing nothing, paradoxically, will fire your imagination. What better place for dreams, after all, than bed?

Recharge, then Get up and Live

The real benefits of a day in bed only become clear the next day. That’s when you’ll be surprised by your energy and general zest for life. The unusual inactivity will ensure you’re ready to hit the ground running 24 hours later. And maybe that’s the best part about taking a day off: how much, when it’s over, you want to get out there and live.