This past weekend was the first time in a while I had an actual, well, weekend. And I have to admit, it was pretty nice.
For the past couple years, weekends off have been few and far between. Mostly, it had to do with me working retail; if I didn’t specifically request it off, I was pretty likely to have to work Saturday and Sunday. The caveat of course being that if I did request a weekend off, it was because I had something to do, most likely an SCA event.
But even before that I was in grad school, and weekends were a time to catch up on homework; even if I wasn’t doing anything, I probably should have been. But even then I tried very hard to give myself at least one day to relax, both to decompress and spend time with my girlfriend.
And even before that was college and working as an A/V technician, where I often had to be on call for weekend events. Nowhere near the stress an horrible hours of working at Costco, but definitely an occasional thing.
And even before that was high school and living at home and– well, you get the idea. When you get down to it the concept of a “weekend off” has been largely theoretical for me for far too long.
But this past weekend was different. I’m no longer working at Costco, so having the weekend off was a given. We’re also past Battlemoor, which means no more camping events until next spring, which means no more getting ready for camping events until next spring as well. I’m no longer in school, so there’s no feeling guilty about not doing homework. And my girlfriend and I have been living together for a while now, so there’s no pressure to spend every spare waking hour with each other.
So what did I do with my newly-rediscovered free time? I pretty much surfed the Internet and played video games all day in my own office while my girlfriend did similar in hers.
And it was wonderful.
Sure, I did some stuff that was “productive,” like Battlemoor laundry and picking up some of the messes in the common area. I even invited my brother over to hang out (and play more video games, but that’s beside the point). But for the most part I completely slacked off, and even managed to not feel guilty about it. And I can’t remember the last time I managed to do both of those things together.
But it’s definitely a feeling I could get used to.