One thing that school created for all of us growing up is the idea of looking forward to breaks and long weekends! These breaks and long weekends are structured and determined for us and we don’t give much thought to planning them. If we were fortunate enough to have the funds in the family and adult family members that had time off at the same time as us, we would get to do exciting things during these breaks that were out of the normal day to day activities such as traveling out of town or exploring things in town (I have fond memories of going to the Adler Planetarium, The Museum of Science and Industry, and the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago with my dad when he was able to take time off on a three day weekend!)
Again, while we are children, we don’t give much thought to these trips or breaks, but one thing that is certain is that we anticipate them with great excitement. This excitement helped propel us through the mundaneness of the school year or a boring routine summer day, and seemingly made time move by quicker.
As children we can take things for granted sometimes as we are handed structure on a silver platter. We can forget to apply the structure (and in this case, excitement) to our schedules! Without scheduled fun to look forward to, the weekly grind can be exhausting. I am fortunate that at a minimum I have 6-7 Tang Soo Do related events a year that I get to look forward to automatically. I always cherish being able to see my martial arts family during these events and I feel recharged and ready to go back to work after these events. I also try to plan a yearly hiking trip to a different local-ish state park with my friends from college.
These trips are major plans; it is also important for us to spice up our weekends by doing something different on occasion. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy. For me it could be playing a round of disc golf after class with Yoshi, sharing a meal with some college friends, cooking a new recipe or playing a new board/card game with my girlfriend Sarah, or inviting my family over to spend time with them. Doing these small things on the weekends helps me to look forward to them.
While it is important to enjoy work and do what you love, work is still work! Make sure to take time off, and with that time off, make sure to do something exciting or different, no matter how small the excitement is. Take the time to recharge for a productive week ahead.
