Living for the Weekend – It’s OK!

Over the past year, I’ve read a number of blog posts about how horrible life is when living for the weekend.  They say things like you are only living for 2 out of the 7 days in the week.  The point those posts usually get around to is that you should do some fun things during the week.

Live it up during the week?

They often recommend getting out of the house.  The recommend things like having dinner with friends, or going out and doing something with the kids.  The odd thing about the recommendations given, is that I wouldn’t exactly call those things “living.” 

Sure it’s fun to go out during the week and do anything other than working.  I love to go to the park with my family, or go on a bike ride.  About once a week, or sometimes every other week, we’ll ride our bikes about 2 miles to our local Subway sub shop.  Our ride is quite leisurely.  It kinda has to be, since our four year old daughter is pedaling her own bike equipped with training wheels.  We eat dinner at Subway, and then we take a leisurely ride back home. 

Occasionally we’ll drive or ride our bikes to a local park.  We have three parks within biking range.  Parks are great on warm summer evenings, as long as you get there before the mosquitos come out, which is around dusk.  The problem in the winter is that most parks around here close at dark, and we’d really have to rush to get to a park between the time I get home from work, and the time the park closes.

Limited Time During the Week

I have about 3 hours from the time I get home from work until the time I’ve set as bedtime.  I can sometimes flex that to 4 hours if I allow myself a later bedtime.  Most nights 30 to 60 minutes of that is spent preparing and eating dinner.  That leaves about two hours to do other things. 

Sometimes those other things are house hold chores like mowing the grass, weeding the flower beds, doing dishes, or cleaning.  I prefer to do most of these things during the week, so that I’m not chained to the house on the weekends taking care of things I’d rather not be doing on the weekend.  These things usually take a night or two out of my week. 

I also have hobby type things that take time during the week.  Things like working on my blog or participating in Jeep club activities. 

Living for the Weekend!

Here is where I differ from a lot of other anti-live-for-the-weekend bloggers.  I don’t consider those things “living.”  Not in the full-on have a blast living it up on the weekend kind of way.  We have some fun during the week, but we “live” on the weekends. 

Typical weekends are jam packed with activities.  Fun stuff that we love to do.  In the summer we often head to the beach for the day.  We have passes to the four Disney parks, and we usually hit on of these theme parks at least a couple days a month.  We have Jeep club events like picnics or campouts.  In the spring and fall, we hit some of the local art festivals.  With a lot of families in our circle, we tend to have a lot of birthday parties to go to.  We sometimes go to local parks and picnic or play with no time restraints. 

This is what I’d call “living for the weekend.”  These things are difficult to do during the week.  These are things that we love to do.  These are events and activities that give us joy.   We do some fun things during the week, but we live for our weekends. 

Perhaps some of my fellow bloggers have a lower standard of “living,” if you can bare that play on words.  Maybe they consider a quick trip to the park for 20 minutes of play living.  Maybe they consider a bike ride to dinner living.  I suppose in a way it is, but it pales to the “living” that can be done on the weekend.  That glorious time where time restraints disappear and we are free to live the entire day doing whatever we please. 

I’d be willing to bet the target audience of the typical “living for the weekend” post is the TV watching zombie that does nothing else during the week.  I bet most of those people are exactly living for the weekend though.  I think many of those people aren’t living at all, and that much of their weekends are spent in front of that very same TV that takes up all their weekday time. 

If you are living for the weekend, then I say keep on living.  Take care of all the non-fun stuff during the week, so you can spend the weekend living it up.  Spend every minute of that unrestrained weekend time enjoying yourself and “live for the weekend.”

This post was written by...

Eric Watermolen – who has written 187 posts on Eden Journal.

Eric is the founder of Eden Journal. He loves blogging about personal growth and desires to make a small difference in the world by providing a platform for bloggers to share ideas on a wide range of topics from personal development to spiritual and philosophical awakenings.