As much as I love my weekends, they are not always good for me. I am a creature of habit and routine. During the work week these habits and routines keep me moving and they provide a rhythm to my day. There are also times that I am carried through my day by an inner auto-pilot that instinctively knows what I should be doing. Although weekends are a needed and highly desirable part of my life, I often fall apart on weekends. When I have nothing to do, and nowhere to be, I often feel lost. On the weekends I sleep a little later than on workdays. I still get up early, because I love mornings, but not as early as I do on workdays. For reasons I don’t completely understand, it takes me forever to get going on a Saturday or Sunday. My body moves slowly and my mind awakens at the same pace. By the end of a long weekend or a vacation at home, I find myself bored and restless. The exception to all of this is when I have a planned activity that gives me a jumpstart and I am energized. This past Saturday I got up early, drove to where my son works, and I picked up my granddaughter. I had promised her that we would go see “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”. Getting out into the early morning air, coffee mug in hand, and looking forward to a day with Chloe, I felt alive. Without this activity I would have gotten up, feeling like an really old man, and I would have been moving at a snail’s pace. I would have consumed multiple cups of coffee, read my newspaper, and then I would have likely taken a mid-morning nap. I think about this scenario whenever I have serious thoughts about my eventual retirement. When I have been given the gift of time as a reward for all the years of labor, what will I do with it? For the young, and the old who are still working, weekends are a gift. For those lucky enough to be able to retire someday, time will be a challenge.
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