Every Day a Saturday

Maybe we shouldn't be working for the weekend.

In the cabin I stayed in this past weekend, there was no internet. I only had enough cell service to text on occasion. But on Sunday afternoon, just after a swim in a lake, I took one of the best showers of my life and wanted to laze around a bit. I wasn’t ready to write and I wasn’t ready to read, so I picked up my phone and attempted a scroll. 

I was only barely successful in this endeavor. I couldn’t get anything to load except one little clip from my dear friend Jon. It was a video that appeared as a photo (thanks to my lack of internet) posted to his story, of his feet propped up on a table, with a book in his lap. A candle was lit and presumably flickering, though I couldn’t see it, and I’d imagine there was a cat next to him though I couldn’t see his cat, Marvin, either. 

The photo had a single line of text tucked neatly in the empty space made by the window opposite him, his legs, and his book, that read “Every day a Saturday.”

I did what I do often when I’m scrolling and I see something wonderful: I exit out of whatever app I’m in and I say out loud “That’s a good note to end on.” And I walk away.

It’s been a couple of days since I saw the post and I’m still thinking about it. Like most of us, I’ve found myself living for the weekend. It’s a newer development for me, pinned to the last four years of my professional life, that I’ve had a weekend at all. But I’m a fast learner, and as of late I’ve been well studied in the go-as-hard-as-possible-during-the-week lifestyle, only to crash out. The weekend is reserved for slow pleasure and doing whatever I want, as well as catching up on the home tasks that I’ve actually come to enjoy, like grocery shopping, tidying, and folding towels.

I’ve been dedicated to unlearning a lot of the ways I’ve historically looked at work since leaving my job in February of this year. I’ve spent a lot of effort on both working as hard as I can and making my life as enjoyable as possible. It’s been a big season of getting reconnected with myself and healing some parts of me that were fractured, but I’ve been somewhat successful.

In this deep pursuit of self-understanding, I’ve been fascinated with my own work ethic. In the freelance years before I took my full time job, I worked hard and with reckless abandon. If work needed to get done, I’d throw myself into it in a messy way, working long hours and torturing myself until everything was tidied up and delivered to my clients. There’s nothing wrong with this, but I spent a lot of time during the normal workday, more than I care to admit, stressing about the work itself and worrying about booking in a way that was unproductive and just left me feeling sizzled. I set strict hours for myself, and then found that often I wasn’t capable of doing the work I needed to do within those hours because I had spent them in a tizzy of stress and frustration, toiling away at hypotheticals. 

This approach was in need of an obvious renovation. Since February, I’ve put a lot of effort into an even-keeled schedule. I’ve looked at the 16 hours a day I spend not sleeping as an invite to make a plan that works for me. On weeks with a lighter workload I distribute my to-do’s as evenly as I can and I make more time to do the more fun aspects of writing this newsletter—watching movies, reading books, falling into internet pop culture rabbit holes. Then, if I get inspired to write on a Sunday afternoon, I make my way to my co-working space and tuck into a corner with a bottomless cup of decaf coffee and stroopwaffles.

I want to do what I can make life enjoyable, even during the work week. As I was writing most of this draft, I was still in bed in a beautiful cabin on a writing retreat I took myself on because I was feeling stalled out. 

I’m trying to make even my writer’s blocks feel pleasurable to overcome.

I think this is why the idea of “Every day a Saturday” felt particularly potent to me. It feels like a finer point on an idea I’ve been mulling over in my mind for over six months. 

What would it look like for even the days I have work to have a weekend feeling imbued within them?

How do I make play and intentional relaxation a part of every day? 

What does it look like for me if every day feels like Saturday? I wrote out a list.

• More reading. 

• Slow coffee. 

• Watching the butterflies and birds flit around the flower garden I planted this year. 

• Making myself breakfast.

• Working at something in concentrated effort. 

• Calling a friend to catch up while I’m washing the dishes. 

• Cold, fresh fruit. 

• Picking out my movie for my husband & I’s alternating movie nights with research and diligence

• Lighting incense or a candle when it’s time to get to work. 

• Cooking food that feels exciting and inspiring or cooking food that is delicious and quick. 

• Optimizing for fun when I can. 

• MUSEUMS!!

• Getting dressed in outfits that feel like me.

• Writing for myself, before writing for others. 

• Fifteen minutes of just sitting and thinking without distraction or agenda. 

• Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports

• Planning a trip to the movies solo 

• Silly little craft projects.

• Stretching.

• Going for a swim.

If you make your own list I’d love if you shared it with me, either in the comments or by hitting reply to this email.

May every one of our days have a little bit of Saturday in them.

And thank you to Jon Smalt for the idea that inspired this piece and for being a consistent source of inspiration.

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