I have had the loveliest weekend… This was the first weekend in the entire month of May where I didn’t have to fill up the car with ridiculously overpriced gas and drive up North or over the hill for some kind of function. No family obligations, no meetings or appointments, just 72 hours of uninterrupted “Steph Time.” And boy did I need it…
I am a big proponent of “Down Time.” Time away from all the things we “have” to do, indulging in the things we “want” to do. Naturally as we grow older, our responsibilities increase (as well as our commitments to others), and opportunities for downtime shrink. There is always so much, too much to do, how is it practical to spend a day doing “nothing”? I believe this is where the workaholic wheels of Capitalist society have it backwards. Doing nothing is doing something. Taking care of your emotional and mental health, slowing down, and reducing one’s overall stress level, if only for a day, is just as important as our jobs, families, and the million other things that need our attention at any given time. It makes us happier people, and in turn we are able to give more freely, become better friends, better parents, better partners. We need to remember to take care of ourselves, to schedule regular amounts of “me” time. It may appear selfish to some, but I really do believe it is essential to maintaining one’s sanity…
Needless to say, I feel incredibly blessed to have had a full weekend (a 3-day weekend at that!) all to myself. I definitely made the most of it. Sleeping in, yoga, long bike rides, laying around in the sun… Taking the time to enjoy the beauty that surrounds me…
Those were the wildflowers I saw when I attempted to go down to the beach for the afternoon… It ended up being a little too windy, so I decided to relocate to the Oakes lawn instead, where it was just perfect…
Not a bad view at all, if I do say so myself… So I set up camp, ready for an afternoon of blissful productivity…
Which it was… Lots of reading and even more writing. I polished off a monster chapter and am most definitely in a writing zone, which feels wonderful. AND I got to work on my tan. Life is good today, life is real good.
I even found time to sit down and watch Hitch again, an excellent movie, laugh out loud funny. Gotta love chick flicks. One question though- why can’t we just clone Will Smith? Seriously, it seems incredibly unfair that there is only one of him wandering around and he’s already happily married. *sigh* But I digress…
Downtime – I give it 5 stars. Go out and get you some 
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