I could’ve written this last night. Or the night before. But instead, I’m writing it now, under the challenge of wanting to knock out something before I have to go wake up my child from the first nap of the day, because I’m feeling like I haven’t really accomplished anything productive over the weekends that I pine for during the week, but have no idea what to do when they finally arrive.
So I close my work laptop on Friday afternoon, and spend the rest of the afternoon playing with my daughter until it’s time for her to go to bed. Bath time, and then bed time, and after she’s asleep, I finally have some free time for myself for a few hours, before I go to bed at a conservative hour because I’m up at 6:30 am every single day and I don’t want to bone myself just because I want to stay up late just because it’s the weekend.
I don’t really do anything at all. I sit at my laptop watching random YouTube clips of chiropractor cracking, Initial D, and the seemingly endless parade of rehashed Parks & Recreation clips. Actually, I take that back partially, I watched the first two episodes of WandaVision, which I think it’s too early to tell how I feel about it, except that I’m able to stay in the game with it unlike Legion, but both episodes combined were about 45 minutes once you factor in the 14 minutes of ending credits in the first two episodes.
Before I know it, it’s 11:07 pm, it’s too late for me to watch anything else, but it’s still a hair earlier than I’d rather go to bed, so instead I lay in bed playing Fire Emblem Heroes or doing surveys for pennies on my phone until it’s time to go to bed.
Saturday was a pretty good day, as I like to tie in little excursions amidst caring for my child throughout the day and in between her naps, so that we can all feel like we’re actually leaving our house, even if it the vast majority of places are contactless or curbside pickups. We tried a new restaurant, ran some errands with no complications, and I heard from a friend that had been on my mind lately. I felt in such good spirits, I felt as if I should capitalize and buy a lottery ticket, since the Powerball was up to $640M, and why the fuck not.
Baby goes to bed, and then it’s really more of the same – I don’t really know what to do, so I end up sitting at my laptop dicking around, feeling like I should at least watch something, hemming and hawing for way longer than most people typically do, and then watching the last two episodes of Lovecraft Country that I hadn’t seen, except my heart’s not really into it, and I ultimately end up thinking it’s just kind of okay. Now it’s 11 pm, and I’m thinking of retiring so I don’t kill myself at 6:30 the next morning.
Which brings us to today. Instead of the one nap I give myself while baby naps (that was done on Saturday), I go ahead and get my every-other-day run out of the way. I pre-prepare a recipe that mythical wife and I hope will be baby-friendly, and now I’m sitting here thinking that I’ve let a large portion of the weekend go to waste, and musing at the simple fact that I don’t really know what to do with my free time whenever I do have any. I could watch television or movies and chip into the queues that have bloated to gargantuan proportions, but then I often times get choice paralysis and then end up shutting down from overstimulation, and instead wishing that there were just more 90 Day Fiance or My 600 Lb. Life to watch instead, which are the only shows that I really truly stay up on top of.
But that’s where I’m at now. I just don’t really know what to do with my free time, and that alone is enough to make me anxious and wordy but not do anything about it. It just becomes a topic for me to mindlessly brog about to consume 25 minutes in a manner that doesn’t feel like completely a waste. Then soon will be time to wake up my child, and proceed with her day, and if she’s fussy or cranky, then I’m guiltily counting down the clock until the next nap to when I can have some free time that I don’t know what to do with, and then the cycle continues until it’s time to go to bed and then a larger cycle continues.
It sounds way more depressing than I actually feel, but when I try to look at things objectively, that’s really how it kind of looks. But at least I hit the Powerball three times, so I’ll get back a whopping $12 on my $20 investment.
