Do you ever find yourself sitting on the couch in some uncomfortable position, scrolling through Instagram or reading painful news articles or marathoning something on YouTube or Netflix, and you realize that you’ve had to use the bathroom for the last 45 minutes, but your legs are asleep, and if you get up from the couch, then the realization of all of the time you’ve just spent will come crashing back down upon you like a deadly tidal wave of guilt and self-loathing?
No? Just me? Or can you relate?
Here’s the thing — I am really, really good at doing work. Not to brag, but it’s what I’ve been trained to do with both punishment and reward for my entire life.
On the flip side, I am really, really terrible at enjoying my free time.
Maybe it’s because we’ve been taught that time is never “free” or even “ours” — that if we’re not using time to produce or achieve something, then we’re not just wasting it (which is bad enough!) — we’re actively stealing it from someone or something more worthy.
Maybe it’s because we’ve been taught to earn and then treasure a rare day off — so much so that our expectations for the joy and delight that we “should” enjoy on such a day far outweigh what’s actually possible.
Maybe we’ve just never been taught how to actually enjoy our time, or we’ve never been given permission to do so. So we find ourselves on the couch, scrolling through Instagram (which is not a bad or evil or wasteful activity!), glancing at the doorway every few minutes as though waiting for a cranky boss to appear and admonish us to get our lazy butts back to work.
Maybe there’s something deep within our hearts that isn’t satisfied with the couch-sitting and social media-scrolling, but what we actually want to be doing instead isn’t immediately apparent.
Or maybe it’s all of the above, and it’s really complicated, and we’re really complicated, and that’s okay because we are all here to walk with, support, and encourage one another. And we have the rest of our lives to learn.
Words & warmth,
Sarah