A day of rest, part two
(Continued from ‘A day of rest, part one’.)
Now days, most of my friends don’t live in the same town, let alone the same house. And I spend six days a week sitting in front of a computer. So I’ve found the best thing I can do with that one special day off every week is to do something adventurous.
I’ve talked about this personal adventure idea a little before, and I still think working adventure into even one small part of your life can do wonders for the whole. That’s a third of the reason why OCSPLORA exists.
Just to be clear though, if my job were in construction, or involved lots of travel, or had me doing professional lightweight mixed martial arts fighting at least half my week, I would probably spend my days off laying on the couch in front of the tv watching The Last Samurai.
I think one of the keys to a successful day off is to do something completely different on that day than what you do the rest of the week. So if the rest of my week was not indoors, and not sitting in front of this Venus Eyetrap, and not at home, it’s fair to say I might want to do those things on my day off.
The hard part for me, upon deciding I needed to get out and do adventurous things on my day off, was to try to do anything fun by myself. I have no problem escaping home to go work in a cafe for six hours on a Saturday, but to get out of the house and go have fun – by myself? That’s weird.
(And it’s not, by the way, that I prefer to be by myself when I go out looking for something to do on a Sunday. It just works out that way most of the time due to my friends having dumb schedules or living so far away or wanting to spend all their free time with their families and what-not.)
What helped me, actually, was when my wife began working in the city, which is about a half hour away, instead of at a store one town over, which was about ten minutes away. We have one car and the train schedule doesn’t work out for her on Sundays. If I was already leaving the house to go drop her off at work, I might as well find something to do while I was out and take whatever I needed with me so I didn’t have to come back.
It doesn’t happen every week. Some Sundays just get lost in the mix, but I do try hard to keep the no-computer-no-internet-no-doing-anything-that-feels-too-much-like-work-on-my-day-off rule. Oh, and grocery shopping. I avoid grocery shopping at all costs because it is definitely work.
So my advice is to just do it. Go for a walk, lay in a patch of soft, fluffy grass with a good book, call up a friend and go out, ride your bike, go snow skiing or hot air ballooning or polar bear riding or whatever it is people do in your area of the world to get out of the house and have a good time, because what’s life without one day a week of fun and relaxation? And if you’re not doing it now, when else are you going to start?