On not having a plan
I spent years optimising my weekends. This is about what happened when I stopped, and why the empty afternoon turned out to be the point.
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For a long time I treated free time like a logistics problem. Two days off meant two days to allocate, and an unallocated afternoon felt like waste.
The empty afternoon
Then a trip fell through and I had a Saturday with nothing in it. I was, genuinely, a bit annoyed. I walked to the end of the road because I couldn’t think what else to do, and then kept walking, and then sat on a bench for an hour watching the tide go out.
It was the best day I’d had in months.
What I think was happening
The plan wasn’t the problem. The problem was that every hour had a job, so no hour was allowed to become anything else. Nothing could surprise me, because I’d already decided what it would be.
An empty afternoon isn’t a gap in the week. Quite often it’s the only part of the week that’s actually yours.
What I do now
I keep one afternoon a week deliberately unplanned. Sometimes it’s wonderful. Sometimes I just do laundry and feel faintly guilty. Both are allowed — that’s rather the point.
