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Top Comments: "I Should Be Doing Something" Edition [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-07

Yesterday I was enjoying my morning coffee while doing my daily mental puzzle quartet (Connections, Wordle, Worldle and Quordle, if you’re not already friends with me on facebook and tired of my daily post!). As I struggled over my last Quordle guess, I caught up on a chat thread with my Mom’s group and saw this, posted at 7:56am:

Someone tell me why getting out of bed after 7 feels lazy to me and "I should be doing something ". I love sitting with coffee and the paper on Sunday, but my head is always buzzing with guilt on what I "should" do.

Now, for those who don’t know me personally, during the week I generally am up and busy fairly quickly- shower, coffee and yogurt while doing the aforementioned mental puzzles, and then it’s time to feed/walk the dog and get going with the daily grind! During the school year (of which we have only ONE MORE and then K2 is finished with high school!!) my day begins shortly after 6am, and in the summer the dog gets my attention by 7.

Weekends, however, unless there’s a morning soccer match or somewhere we need to be, are WAY more relaxed. I linger over my coffee, maybe make something else to go with my yogurt, listen to NPR, and often don’t even get to the shower until an hour or two have passed.

When I read my friend’s post, I felt a variety of emotions. Sad that she (and many others, including myself even as I was doing the same thing) felt guilty about not “doing something”, or about sleeping past what is STILL early o’clock on a weekend (if you work weekends, substitute your day off instead). Annoyed that our society places such a value on Productivity, as if we’re machines that can run full-throttle without recharging. Questioning whether everyone feels this, or just some [women, parents] of us.

Yesterday also was the 22nd anniversary of my mother’s death and as I thought back on her life, I reflected on her ALWAYS being up before me. When I was a child, of course, that’s just the way things are… parents are there when you wake up. When I was a young adult and came home to visit, I wondered why Mom was always up before 6am even if she didn’t have somewhere to be until later. I remember asking at one point, and she replied that those hours in the morning were where she could be alone with her thoughts, savor her coffee (and yes, her cigarettes, which were the cause of her death), sit on the porch and watch the world around her, and relax before the day got hectic.

I do the same thing. I’m almost always first up in our household, no matter how many of Casa Brillig are at home. I come downstairs, put the hot water kettle on, and enjoy the quiet before the storm that is daily living. If I choose to do that for extra time on weekends, that is NOT doing “nothing”. That’s self-care and I refuse to feel guilty for it. As another friend in our group chat said in answer to the question of feeling guilty: “because capitalism has trained you to equate your worth with productivity.”

Here’s what I replied to my friend:

Sitting with coffee & the paper, or sleeping a bit more *IS* "doing something". It's self-care, it's necessary mental downtime, it's listening to our bodies hearts and souls. It is doing the most important of things. No one will care, ever, if the dishwasher was emptied or the weeds pulled. Not if the cost is your own wellbeing. Typed while lingering over coffee, npr, and my morning puzzles.

So tell me… do you take time to relax on the weekends (or any other time)? Do you feel guilty about it, or take it as something we all deserve to enjoy guilt-free? Come chat in the comments, after perusing today’s trio of Top Comments, Mojo and Pictures!

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