I’ve recently discovered that my definition of “doing nothing” is different than most peoples’ definition of doing nothing.

Point in case, my friend asked me what I did on Sunday. I, being the thorough individual that I am, listed all of my activities:

“Oh, nothing. I got up, practiced some Portuguese, did laundry, watched the SNL from last night, finished a book, wrote for a bit, took a walk, and then it was time to go to improv class.”

My friend, who did not sign up to have this already monotonous conversation become even more monotonous: “Sounds like something to me.”

While those are indeed “somethings”, in my head, it’s nothing. And yet, many people consider it to be a lot of somethings.

Productive some might even say. Which led me to wonder why my bar for “something” is so high?

If I get to even two of those things during the week, I consider it an accomplishment. I’ve achieved something outside of work! Huzzah!

But my weekends?

That’s when my accomplishment bar is at its highest. I have nothing but “me” time. I should be attending events, traveling, writing entire novels in two days, filming and editing documentaries worthy of the Oscars! It’s 60 hours of free time! I’m counting Friday as a half day. (Remember half days in elementary school? Nothing made eight-year-old me feel more alive than knowing I would only be at school for 3.5 hours. Don’t even bother with lunch, Cafeteria Lady! I’ll take my meal in the comfort of the backseat of my mom’s car.)

Sitting around in my bathrobe with an unwashed face until noon reading a book and listening for the laundry machine to ding so I can move my wet clothes to the dryer before they begin to mold and people spend the week questioning my hygiene? That’s doing nothing.

If you’ve made it this far in this essay, you’re probably trying to figure out what my problem is. Why am I like this?

I never considered myself much of an overachiever. I quit all of the time. I quit writing this essay at least six times before circling back to it. This blog is called I’ll Come Back To This Later for a reason. Now, you’re seeing why… 2 years later.

I once quit a high school summer actuary program (nerd!) after my family drove 14 hours from Atlanta to Washington, DC because I wasn’t feeling the vibes when I got there. At least not enough to go through with the program especially when I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be an actuary.

Yes, a career in actuarying (?) pays well, but it is also a mind-numbingly boring career. At least, that’s what my 14 minutes of research I conducted prior to the road trip reveaked. My step-dad was, pissed, of course. I can’t blame him. I took us on a road trip for absolutely no reason and didn’t even give the program a good ol’ college try (because I was in high school) before I called it quits.

Frankly, there are probably other examples of quitting that I could share that don’t paint me as selfish and spoiled but this was one of my grander quits. It was drama! I mean, I got the whole family involved! That’s huge. We don’t speak of it anymore. Maybe I should bring it up at Thanksgiving dinner this year.

When it comes to work, I’m not really interested in working hard. This is a terrible thing to put out there should future employers ever stumble across this blog (OMG please hire me! I promise I’m worth it), but I’m paid to be there and as long as the work gets done, it shouldn’t matter how much effort I put into it. No one cares how hard I worked. People really only care about the end result.

In fact, hard work is often rewarded with more work! Yay! Good job on doing something so right! We’re going to give you more things until you don’t do them right and then we will be angry. Sure promotions or raises pop up here and there but being efficient at work and getting things done in order to give yourself time to just chill on the company’s dime? Well, that must mean we haven’t given you enough work to do to maximize our costs so here’s some more dumb shit to do. (Again, I promise I’ll do my job really well. Don’t let this stop you from having my shining light on your team!)

And look, I totally get people who want to spend their personal time literally laying comatose in front of a tv for two days until it’s time to haul it back into the office. Work can be very mentally draining and sometimes all you have in you is to lift the remote and binge The Crown all weekend. It is freeing not to be part of the slave grind that society has built to keep us from enjoying more artistic and creative endeavors in favor of ones that actually earn us money.

I see it this way, Monday through Friday, do not belong to me. It’s time I’ve given up for a cause. The cause being “I like things so I’ll do these tasks because they give me money”. I might get a little sprinkling of true me hours here and there but that time is not my own. If I’m told to jump and the day doesn’t begin with the letter “S”, call me Michael Jordan.

The weekend though? It’s my time! And I get so little of it that I want to maximize it and do as much as possible, so I do. It’s my time to explore those creative and artistic endeavors I don’t have a chance to bite into during the week.

–holds monocle up to face– Because our time here is so limited and precious we should be utilizing it to its full potential. Should you choose to use it to catch up on some lost sleep? Great. Sleep is awesome and we need that too. No judgments here. And should I choose to use it to write a rambling essay about squeezing in as many activities as possible into a few short hours? Also great.

My point is, I only have about 37 more hours of me time to find something to do so I have to wrap this up and go scratch another me time itch.