The American work week goes like this: Monday morning comes as we stammer to our place of work, where we talk about what we did “all” weekend. Tuesday doesn’t matter. We call Wednesday “hump day” because we’re “getting over the hump”, and for its double-entendre. Thursday is the new Friday! Let’s go out and do stuff, tomorrow’s Friday! It’s TGIF! That means we only have to kill a few hours at work! It’s Friday night! Saturday, let’s do something recreational! Sunday! Time for church and family! Ugh, it’s Sunday evening and I’m counting down the clock until I go to bed to start the cycle. Living for the weekend, indeed.
“Living for the weekend.” How often do we say that we work hard for the weekend and before we know it, it’s already Sunday evening? We wait all week for the weekend and it’s over before we know it. Why do we do that to ourselves? Instead, we should make the most of every day and remember that the weekend is over and we’ll all do it over again as part of a never-ending cycle.
Sound familiar? Does it sound like we’re making the most of our days? Today is Saturday, which is my motivation for writing this post. I’ve worked 9-5s and I’ve worked hospitality. I’ve worked freelance. I’ve worked through nights. Even though the Monday-Friday schedule leads us to habituate our lives to the point of complacency, Saturdays just “feels” different. However, they’re only 14% of our lives.
Living for the weekend goes deeper. If we’re living for the weekend, do we really like our lives? It’s a simple question that may be difficult to answer. Perhaps we’ve spent a lot of our lives developing that career, even though we’re not happy with it. Perhaps we’ve made too many friends who we’d abandon if we left. Perhaps we’re too comfortable to make a change in our lives. Perhaps we don’t know any better and have never thought about changing. All valid reasons, but those months become years, which become decades. We’re not getting any younger.
Take a moment to think about our lifestyle. Are we going anywhere? Do we want to go somewhere? Analyze where we are and where we want to go. If we dread our lives so much that we only look forward to a couple of days per week, then it’s time to change. It’s time to think about what we want to do. Brainstorm and think of an actionable plan.
Live for our lifestyle, plans, and aspirations. If we look back and think “what have I been doing with my life” over the past few years, then that ought to be motivation to continue to move forward. I’ve been told we go through life, but don’t live life. Make that change. If living for the weekend is your life’s plan, you’re wasting 72% of your life.
