Dear Reader,

“I decided to take a day off work each week,” I told my friends. 

They laughed. So me, such a workaholic. But wait wait wait, it’s not that. Hear me out.

I’m such an early bird. 

Those first few hours of the day are golden for me. After lunch, I collapse, counting down the minutes until it’s acceptable to go to sleep… 

So my thought was this – what if I worked shorter hours, but every day of the week? 

*I have long struggled with weekends, holidays, ‘days off’, because I love my work.* 

To take a ‘day off’ is to deprive myself of my joyous, dreamy creative life! I am my full expressive self at work, so what does it mean to take a day off from that? Am I no longer myself? Who am I, when I am not creating?

I am playing. I am being. 

In my planner, I box my day off in blue. I get ready for it, enjoy the rare  deadline of the day before. Running my own business, most of my finish lines are flexible. I celebrate a sense of completeness, of pause, by creating a weekly stopping point. 

It’s a day long artist date, except others are invited (sometimes). I don’t have to DO anything by the end of the day, not even chores (although I tend to do chores). At night, I bubble with excitement at the thought of returning to writing the next morning. Because I let myself miss it! I miss it so badly, I’m so ready to return. And for that, it’s worth taking a day off. 

It’s the hardest day of my week.

I attach feeling good with checking off boxes on my to do list, wrapping up projects, completing final edits. I’m challenging myself to find joy in things without having to tell the story. But also… when I let go of needing to tell the story? It becomes a pretty good story to tell. 

Until the Next Chapter, 

What I did on my day off:

• made coffee for 2; my friend Matt helped me design Korean lettering for my Madonna wall 
• simmered aduki beans on the stove for 2 hours, making sweet bean paste for book club (we read a novel of the same name)
• listened to Janelle Monàe on cd while lying on my couch, looking at random stuff online, realising I felt better just lying there with my cosy heating pad on my shoulders — sore from conditioning class, too tired even to sing
• made dorayaki pancakes, hosted book club in my home; we talked about work/life balance, hobbies for the sake of hobbies, fulfilment in things that aren’t work, lord of the rings extended editions. (pictured above via @katiegohiseating!)
• took Snug for little walks but it was windy and cold
• made enchiladas
• watched Gilmore girls with my Friday Night Dinner friend Kat
• read a couple chapters of The Kiss Quotient
• jotted down some aha! ideas for things to write about (including this!)