Well, another weekend has passed, it’s Sunday and I’m beating myself up again because I didn’t start my great-American novel, my house isn’t spotless, I didn’t run a marathon, things are still broken and in need of repair, and I didn’t catch up on all of my reading. It’s the same old pattern – we look forward to the weekend so we can get those things done that we don’t have time to do during the week, and Sunday evening comes and there is still so much that is not done. Is it just me, or are we all programmed that way? All week long, we dream of everything we will accomplish on the weekend, only to have our hopes dashed again by Sunday evening. For the most part, we dedicate our weekdays to our employer and growing in our work life, and our personal dreams, tasks and lives are supposed to take place on weekends. 5 days for the work week, then 2 days for us to git-r-all-done.
But, realistically, can we cram everything that we would like to get done in 2 days per week and still have a life? I think that we put too much pressure on ourselves to get it all done, when really we don’t have to.
One of the most important things we should do on the weekends is get some rest. But every weekend, I seem to do too much R&R and not enough work. Should I feel guilty about this? I think not. God rested on the 7th day and He told us to do the same. So, I’ve figured out that the only person pressuring me to get-r-done every weekend is me.
Actually, most of us do accomplish more on the weekends than we think. Last weekend I felt like I didn’t accomplish anything, although I do remember that I got all of my laundry done, plus a few other things. For this weekend I decided to make a list of things I’d like to get done. I put 5 items on the list – it wasn’t everything that needed to be done, not by a long-shot, but it was realistic and doable. I did do some things that weren’t on my list; I watched a very interesting documentary, so I learned something. Learning is an important thing to accomplish.
After this blog is published, I will have completed 3 of the 5 items that were on my list for this weekend. Not bad. There’s always next weekend to do the rest.