How do you spend your weekend?

A decade or so ago, my busy weekend calendar represented a life full of popularity, purpose and fun. My weekends would be filled with places to go, people to see and a list of things to get done. I would be excited with the anticipation of all that I would do and accomplish. It was the sign of a successful weekend!

Here’s an example of what it typically looked like:

Friday – Straight to restaurant from work, leave by 6:30 to head for theater.

Saturday – Dust and vacuum house. Do dishes, wipe down all counters. Clean out the fridge and make a grocery list. Clean and scour bathrooms. Mop all floors. Laundry. Master bedroom – put all the clothes away and go through the stacks on the chair to go to thrift store. Go through stack of papers on dining room table, pay bills, go through magazine subscriptions and get rid of old copies (be brutal!), categorize and put in cute little boxes I bought at IKEA (oh…and put those boxes together…).

Errands – Grocery shopping, thrift store to drop off clothes, post office for stamps, hardware store (light bulbs and cleaning supplies).

Saturday night – friends coming over for dinner (make sure front of house is clean!).

Sunday – get to church early for meeting, church, lunch with family afterwards, finish up on anything I didn’t get done on Saturday.

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Can you say, “UGH!!” I’m not even including the period of time that I was raising teenagers and had their schedules to fit into my own…and this is just a glimpse of a weekend.

But a day finally came where I realized that it was just too much. This was NOT making me feel happy and popular anymore. I was going out of my mind wearing my imaginary Wonder Woman cape. Coming back to work on Monday was more exciting than my weekends, because I knew I had less to do.

So I began the task of making cuts – BIG cuts.  I won’t kid you, a lot of guilt comes along when you decide to cut the cords on things to do.  I had set my accomplishment bars so high for myself, that cutting back left me feeling like I had failed somehow. But as my weekends….or rather, my life…began to open up, it felt oh so good.

My weekend list still has places to go, people to see and a list of things to get done, but since cutting it all back and learning to embrace my life, it’s taken on a much different look.

Here’s an example for this weekend:

Friday – dinner at home, dessert out with friends, movie when we get back home.

Saturday – coffee & breakfast with HB, two hours of cleaning, take pictures to create slides with my favorite quotes; journal with writing prompts, read a little, watch a movie, buy seeds (online) for my Spring garden, watch another movie.

Sunday – church, Farmer’s Market, lunch out with HB, grocery store for a few things, back home – do two loads of laundry for work, read, watch TV…and whatever else I feel like doing.

Monday – YES! It’s a three-day weekend – and I have nothing on my list for today!! 🙂

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Can you say, “Ahhhh.” Doesn’t that just feel different even in written form?

I actually feel like I’m accomplishing so much more than I did with my crazy woman’s schedule. Probably because I could never get everything done that I had on my list.

I’m learning to live a more casual and simple way of life. When the schedule begins to feel crazy again, because it does creep up sometimes, I begin the process where needed – and without the guilt! Talk about a life with purpose and fun.

What’s on your calendar this weekend? Is there “stuff” that needs to be cut out? Anything you’ve dreamed of doing, but haven’t, because you had too much to do?

That might be a really good beginning place for you…

Put the guilt aside and do something truly purposeful and fun.

Embrace your weekend – embrace your life.

Make it fabulous!