While the saying is usually a month of Sundays, I’d like to talk about the last week of Sundays.
I’ve spent a week of Sundays getting used to taking regular time for myself. I certainly haven’t invented taking Sundays off. Sundays are historically a day of rest and time for reflection and family. But personally they haven’t been until the last seven weeks.
Before this challenge I worked every day. I think I’ve worked every day, in some form or another, bar specifically scheduled vacation days, since school. I’ve always spent my weekends working whether that was homework or coursework throughout school and uni, or client work and blog content creation over the last four or so years. I keep busy. I keep out of trouble.
But I don’t always keep well. That was the issue. After getting so much out of long three day weekends to use up annual leave and a real re-assessment of priorities during pandemic times, I decided I wanted to be someone who had a weekend that was for me.
I have to say I love it.
My Sundays are now about catching up on life admin bits that make my days easier and just doing things I enjoy. Whether that’s running a little bit further than I can in the week, luxuriating a little bit longer in the bath, watching a whole film or taking a moment to pause. I feel like I have time again.
It’s not been without its struggles though. I say struggles in the mildest sense, as what could truly be hard about taking time off?
Well, I still have the same amount of work to do as I did when I spread it out over seven days instead of six. That’s meant I’ve had to be more focused and work a little longer on a Saturday to make sure I can rest on a Sunday. I’ve started to set an out of office for Sundays and make sure I let clients know and preschedule things like my newsletter. It’s forced me to be more organised but also more cut throat with myself when it comes to deadlines. If something is set to get done on a weeknight it has to be done in that time box, not linger over. There are pieces I worked on for inktober that I just drew a line under, knowing I could have done more but that I valued my time to myself more. Plus, after so long valuing my days by their productivity I can’t say that I don’t get itchy hands as I find myself with a few spare hours of a Sunday evening.
Putting a hard regular boundary on your time is hard, especially if you’re not used to it. But I’m realising it’s the only way, for me at least, to make sure that you slow down and really enjoy the change in pace. Half hours here and there don’t add up the same and you can’t always magically undo a deficit with a week away, just like you can’t make up for a bad sleep schedule with a long lie in as much as I would love to.
It’s been an adjustment but it’s also been a long time coming. While I try not to write about it here or in my newsletter for want of sounding like a broken, slightly sad, millennial record I’ve been running on embers for longer than I should probably admit.
I still want to make things. Or at least, I can’t imagine a version of my life where I don’t make things. But I think that this shift to prioritising my own time, like the decision to start drinking the tea I’d been saving in case someone special came to the house (because goddammit I am someone special) is a sign of a bigger shift to come.
I’m questioning more and more why I’m drawing, why I’m writing, why I’m posting, and I don’t always have a good answer. And if I don’t have a good answer, shouldn’t I be spending my efforts doing something I know the why for like taking a good long afternoon nap?
Naps aside, I think that’s probably one for another day.
So for now I’ll be enjoying my Sundays without the yolk of productivity and singing its praises to anyone who’ll listen and not think I’m a complete workaholic bore.
