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Paul Strickland
Paul Strickland

Posted on • Originally published at pestrickland.co.uk

What happened to weekends?

It's Sunday evening as I write this, and as another week beckons I find myself reflecting on another weekend that passed by so quickly. I've noticed weekends to be the hardest part of living through this pandemic, and cannot work out why.

I know a lot of people relish the idea of a busy, social weekend, but that's not me. Indeed, I don't feel like my weekends have changed that much at all. But they feel entirely different. For one, they are a time best described as recovery. Waking up on a Saturday morning I usually feel like I'm horrifically hungover, despite not drinking the night before. Can I really have worn myself out so much during the preceding week? It doesn't seem likely but, perhaps when taking exercise into account and a struggle to incorporate proper rest and relaxation into my normal day, maybe I am just exhausted.

The second problematic aspect of the weekend is the apparent potential that I seem to waste. Two whole days to do all those things I had to leave aside during the week –and yet by Sunday evening I don't seem to have achieved much at all.

It might just be how I frame the weekend. Take this one, for example. I wanted to do several things although not many of them were clearly defined:

  • Work on my struggling Go learning/side project
  • Run/hike
  • Work on one of my lockdown jigsaw puzzles
  • Chores
  • Catch up with the variety of reading that accumulated over the week

I managed to run on Saturday and hike on Sunday. I did a few chores. I did quite a bit of reading. I worked on some Go, got stuck, got frustrated, stopped. I made good progress on the jigsaw, and I also did a fairly decent survey of solar panels for OpenStreetMap. So why do I feel disappointed? I have no idea.

I'm publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload. You can join in yourself by visiting https://100daystooffload.com.

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