Weekends are supposed to be a time of relaxation. I can remember when I was a young girl, livin
g on the dirt roads of South Carolina, and how we so enjoyed the weekend. Waking up around 6am, tip-toeing into the kitchen to fix a bowl of cereal. Then making our way into the living room (back then, there were NO tv’s in your bedroom) to catch our favorite cartoons. My parents would exit their bedroom, fully dressed to take on the day around 10am. Mom would enter the kitchen and make a filling breakfast, interestingly enough just as Soul Train was preparing to come on (those who don’t remember… that’s 11am).
They later ushered the kids out the house to play, and with that, we knew that meant not to come back in unless you had broken a leg or something that required medical attention. This was our parents’ free time. They were able to relax from a long work-week and do whatever they wanted to do. We would run, jump, climb, and play to our heart’s content until Mom yelled from the screen door for us to come in and get something to eat. And that was just Saturday!
I miss those days. I miss enjoying the weekend. The world today is so fast, so busy. The world has taken away “the weekend”. We work constantly! We feel guilty for sleeping in. Society has us so focused on becoming entrepreneurs or doing “something” with our lives that we shame ourselves for the thing that matters most: SELF CARE. “Taking it easy” is a thing of the past. Why do we have to have a to-do list at every turn?
“I can do whatever I want, even if that is nothing at all.” – Kimberly “Isis”
Even when we call ourselves enjoying ourselves, we feel obligated to take the perfect picture for Instagram, or capture the best moment for a Boomerang vid or SnapChat. Our enjoyment has been hijacked by planned exposure. I’m guilty of this as we all are. How many times have you been out to eat a lovely brunch and wanted to share a pic of your plate before digging in? I caught myself about to do that recently, and just said…NO! I dug into the plate and enjoyed that first bite immensely.
How do we take our weekends back? How do we take our lives back? I wonder who does this crazy guilt belong to? You know, the guilt you feel when you sleep in or when you don’t want to do anything but NetFlix and chill all day. We’re adults right? So, who’s checking us so hard that we need to feel guilty??? When I asked myself this question, I realized, that I had allowed “society” to dictate my worthiness. This assumed sense of guilt is a figment of my imagination. I can do whatever I want, even if that is nothing at all.
So, I stayed in. I was up early, but I asked myself, what do you feel like doing? And when the decision was “to rest”, I closed my eyes and drifted back into sleep. I woke up a couple hours later and again asked myself, what do you feel like doing? The next response was to vibe to music and a little cleaning. I continued that process on and on throughout the weekend. By the end of the weekend, I felt so revived, relaxed, and refreshed. Just by simply doing what I wanted to do without throwing my to-do list in or feeling responsible for getting a jump on the work week by working through the weekend. I didn’t feel a need to “be out there” if I didn’t feel like it, although I ended up at an event where I met some amazing women.
I’m reclaiming my weekends, ladies. You should too. After all, we adult 5 days each week. Countless deadlines, tons of responsibilities, constantly being reminded that we still aren’t quite there yet. We owe it to ourselves to be carefree versions of life, if only for 48 hours. Who’s with me?
