I was thinking today that what I need is to structure most days how I tend to structure the weekend days when I have to work. I almost never work full-on from the second I get up to the second I go to bed when it’s a weekend. Even when very busy. What I do is I make sure that I weave in good things of some kind. So, last weekend, I didn’t work at all on Sunday and went for a long walk with friends. Another weekend recently I worked for a couple of hours in the morning on Saturday, then went to the farmers market and met a friend for coffee, and then came home and did a couple of hours work before spending a few hours cooking a lovely meal and sharing it with my family, and then did a couple of hours work in the evening.
If I have managed to fit in some kind of downtime, or time to fill my inspiration bucket, or time to get the fairly small dose of socialising that I need - things like that - then I don’t mind working a weekend. Because it feels like a nice balanced day. Except that’s what weekdays should be and weekends should be just for that stuff.
Today, I slept in. Until 8.30. That’s pretty unheard of. (Except when I’m away - even when I’m working, I tend to sleep in later, somehow.) And I took a fairly leisurely start to the day. Actually, it wasn’t that leisurely, as it included unloading the dishwasher, putting washing on, and then hanging it out in the garden (which was kind of pointless as I still had to put it in the dryer in the evening as nothing had dried much in this weird humid and grey not summer and not autumn weather). Whatever, I didn’t sit down at my desk until maybe 10 am. And I finished at about 5 pm. For the evening. Not just for a couple of hours to cook and then return to my desk. Then I spent the evening watching TV (The Perfect Couple on Netflix - very good!) and drawing. Nothing spectacular, but the lie-in and evening drawing and TV time made it feel OK. Plus, the work is nice and I can listen to podcasts while doing it!
Only 10 days until France.