I’m never quite sure how to approach weekends. On the one hand, it’s the weekend. Relax! Do fun stuff. Enjoy yourself. Recharge for the next work-week.

On the other hand, I am going to die someday and if I don’t get things done I will be a failure. 

Those are… not compatible worldviews. And I know the sane response is “compromise!”, and that makes sense, but it also requires the kind of planning that hives weekends off into “this is your allocated pleasure time, hu-man”. Which doesn’t really feel like fun sometimes.

Weekends are for stuff

My current approach is to write some big-ticket to-dos on a chalkboard in the kitchen and try to tick those off throughout. The idea there is to just have a few big “must dos” and the flexibility to do them when I want.

As systems go, it’s all right. It’s functional. But I still find myself doing things that are “fun” while stressing. Stressing about whether I should be having fun, or, you know, building a doghouse for a dog I don’t own. Yet.

And when I’m working on things, I keep flashing into “but I should be relaxing! Weekends are for fun times!”

I think this is one of the down sides of sobriety. It’s hard to know what to do with yourself when you’re not given a handy “fun crutch.” Granted you have regrets later, but it’s much easier to move into the zone.

I was never a souse, but 104 days into sobriety, it’s funny how I keep discovering new things about my brain. Neuroses that I was definitely tamping down a little bit when I had free time.

And I suppose it’s healthy to be dealing with them. It’s certainly a horrific reason to drink, so grappling with this won’t push me back to the sauce. So that’s something, at least.