it’s another lazy sunday afternoon, and once again i am beleaguered by sotto voce messages of guilt for squandering a full day. at times, doing nothing with my weekend makes me feel incredibly wasteful. profligate with something valuable. it’s no mistake that we “spend” this resource we call time, as if there were monetary amounts attached to each second.
and i usually do start out friday evening chock full of ideas. earnest notions of movies, picnics, shopping, assorted cultural events are invisible notations in a mental diary, bookmarking a genuine intent to take advantage of the city i am so fortunate to have outside my door. and occasionally those plans do come to fruition. some weekends i do make it to the museum or the cinema. some mondays i actually do have something of interest to report back when work colleagues dutifully ask, “how was your weekend?”
but more often i find myself frittering away the days with mundane errands: filling the fridge, emptying the clothes hamper, wrangling with dustbunnies takes more time and effort than i had anticipated or alloted. the crap of daily life that i don’t manage to get to during the week surreptitiously co-opts the day, stealing away my jeaously guarded hours of free time. it invades my carved out space, infiltrates, obliterates. at the end of the weekend, i may have stocked cupboards and a clean house, but precious little else to show for it.
or alternately, i am waylaid with inertia, a molasses-like lassitude invading my muscles – watching time drip away minute by minute from comfort of the couch, playing languidly with the cat, lounging at a friend’s house eating crisps and drinking beer. nothing you can really put your finger on occupying the day, nothing you could say you *did* with purposeful intent – only that which seemed to loosely coalesce around the weight of gravity which seems to have overtaken the body. and the only advantage of this lethargy is that it slows the clock’s inexorable march towards monday morning, stretching the hours out into long, drowsy far-away horizons which take their sweet time in arriving.
still, there is luxury in indolence, and i am only too aware that i am lucky to have free time to indulge in, no matter how foolishly or carelessly i scatter it to the winds. i find security in the knowledge that there will be another 48 hours of freedom in just five short days, so i can take it for granted. and there is comfort in routine – the virtuous saturday morning run, followed by jonno cooking breakfast and making coffee. the predictable hum of the washing machine every sunday at dinner time producing a stack of freshly laundered towels. the shared trek to the grocery store, where we dance the same dance amongst the familiar aisles every week. it’s soothing to have our small intimate patterns of couplehood, as boring as they are.
but there remains that quiet, nagging voice at the back of my head that surfaces in the evenings as i contemplate the arrival of another work week, which insistently reminds me of all the things i was going to do, all the things i was meaning to accomplish. the voice which points out the opportunities gone by, the events i never quite got to – the same voice which started friday with so much enthusiasm, now turned critical and harping.
and i do what i always do: fold my clothes into the dresser, plop down on the couch, turn on the television, crack open a beer, and tell it to shut the fuck up.
erykah badu – time’s a wastin’
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