Take The Weekend

A gentle exhortation.

I set an alarm every Saturday for 9 AM and usually when it goes off, I get out of bed. My instinct on the weekends is to cram as much stuff as possible into the free time that I have, in an attempt to Be Useful. Indulging my natural tendency towards indolence feels counterproductive; giving structure to my free time the way that I do to my working hours makes me feel like I’m doing something, even if it is just aggressively relaxing.

A typical Saturday morning is full of activity. I make breakfast and drink coffee and try to leave the house by 11. Everyone in my house is just waking up by that point, stumbling out of their room and sitting on the couch as the day slips towards the afternoon. A Saturday without plans is a beautiful thing for some.

There’s a specific sort of malaise that sets in if I don’t take a shower or leave the house by noon on a Saturday. Even if it’s just to walk around my neighborhood and touch things that I want to buy but probably won’t, the act of getting dressed and putting my shoes on gives me purpose in a way that sitting on my couch watching television doesn’t.

Packing one day full of fluffy activity intended to make me feel productive is a very specific reaction against laziness, a way of course correcting for my natural inclinations to slump in a chair for hours staring into the depths of my phone. By being out in the world, I am doing something, even if that something is walking around the block, contemplating getting on the subway and then walking back to my house to sit down some more.

It’s okay to take the weekend to do absolutely nothing. It’s okay to indulge the lazy slob within that wants to lay down and not talk to anyone for a full 24 hours. It’s fine to recharge. Take the weekend. Take a weekend. It doesn’t have to be Saturday or Sunday, but any day where you can set work aside, and do nothing. Feeling comfortable with doing nothing is freeing. Just do it. It’s fine. What’s the worst that can happen?

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