Sometimes at the end of the weekend, or on Monday morning, I think back to Friday night and wish I could just freeze a moment from it. On Friday after work, Matt and I rode a New Jersey Transit train out to the suburbs to have dinner with my parents and some old friends of theirs. The train was bright and sunny and filled with relaxed commuters. When we got off the train in the ‘burbs, we walked to a nearby wine store and brought my parents some wine. Then we walked to the house, had wine, went out to the deck and sat at a table underneath an umbrella surrounded by trees and ate delicious food.
When I was a kid, I often liked to just sit at the table and listen to the adults have interesting conversations. Now I can actually be part of the conversation.
Just as the best part of a vacation is often the very beginning, when you’ve come home from work (or, way back when, from school) and realized that you have a wonderful stretch of time ahead to look forward to, sometimes the best part of the weekend is the very beginning. At the end of a vacation I wish I could go back to that moment at the beginning, when I was anticipating everything to come, and just hold the moment.
The rest of the weekend was unexciting. We spent most of it indoors, watching TV. Yesterday I made a recipe from a cookbook: curried chicken salad. It’s tasty and I brought some for lunch today.
The problem with doing nothing but sitting around watching TV is that it doesn’t create any memories. One hour runs into another and you’ve just stared at a screen the whole time. You haven’t experienced anything new or hung out with interesting people. One thing I’ve realized in the last few years is that I’m more of an extrovert than I used to think. I’m still an introvert in lots of ways, and sometimes I’m nervous about meeting new people — but I do need people in my life. I don’t have very many friends whom I see regularly. It’s my own fault for not taking the initiative. And since Matt is more of an introvert, it’s pretty much all on me.
Watching TV wasn’t all bad. We downloaded and watched the crazy season finale of “Doctor Who.” We re-watched the last few episodes of “Mad Men” and then watched the season premiere. I watched parts of “The Wizard of Oz,” which happened to be on TV. That movie never ceases to be special.
But sometimes I worry that I’ll look back on my life and see that I haven’t done enough fun things. I’ll see a succession of empty weekends. A few thousand of them.
Oh, well. Another weekend is just four days away.
I am likewise an introvert who nonetheless feels lonely often, so I can sympathize.
Now, about the wasted time and empty weekends: I think this drive to make every moment “count” and the sense of failure that comes if we don’t live up to that goal is an artificial value imposed on our culture by the Protestant work ethic.
I can understand the prospect of looking back with regret at the end of one’s life on time wasted and opportunities missed. Yet, to all accounts that regret is going to be temporary. Either we get reincarnated and can make up for our mistakes in a next life, or we go to some kind of “heaven” or “paradise,” or we just die and that’s it: out, out brief candle, and so forth.
Actually, in that last (and probably most likely scenario) both the person who wasted his life and the one who went out and made the most of every moment and lived the most fulfilled life possible all end up in the boat.
The risk, I guess, comes in the second scenario in case God (or Whoever) judges one according to how one has spent one’s allotted time. But that also depends on picking the right religion in the first place, so it’s pretty much a crap shoot. :)
Eh. I still wish I had more of a social life instead of sitting around bored.
Just try to have some perspective: there are many people who would kill to have your life.
You should take more trips!!!
If you ever want to socialize, give me a call.
“I always felt an ineluctable guilt when I was just taking it easy in New York when all those grand museums, libraries, plays, concerts, and that whole vast of infinitude of cultural opportunities beckoned me with promises of enrichment.” (Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides)
What a great quote, jill. That perfectly sums up the guilt I feel after a lazy but otherwise fun weekend.
And, though I don’t really know you in the real world, I’m always up for socializing and in-the-city adventures, if you want someone to hang with, Tinman!
Same here. I’d love to meet you in person sometime.
I don’t think one should ever feel guilt over a “lazy but otherwise fun” weekend. Especially if you spent the rest of the week working hard to earn your keep, you deserve time to simply rest and recreate.
That infinitude of cultural opportunities will always be there and, being infinite, there is no way one could ever hope to have the time or money to experience all of it.
The important thing is to do what you want and what you, and to hell with what other people tell you that you should be doing with your time.
A lazy day just watching TV with a boyfriend that I don’t hate and resent ever having met sounds heavenly to me!
I would love to have that kind of free time. When I do get it however and I just sit in front of the tv I feel like you do. Can’t win I guess.