Living life from weekend to weekend
It's Thursday evening. You come home and realise that you had a long, dreadful week dealing with pressure from work and academics. You were so profoundly engrossed in these activities that you couldn't spare some time for "having fun," which consists of hanging out with friends and socialising. So, you pick up your phone and make plans with your friends for the whole weekend.
When you go to bed again on Saturday night, exhausted from all the fun with friends, it hits you that tomorrow is the start of another hectic week, but you didn't reward yourself with any rest. In fact, your weekend was just as busy as the rest of the week, occupied only with more enjoyable activities.
This whole lifestyle is called "weekend-to-weekend living." Although most of us are accustomed to this way of life, it may be detrimental to a person's physical and mental well-being, as our brains and bodies are deprived of a much-needed breather.
Some people make a schedule to finish pending work and studies on weekends, which is unhealthier. These can easily trigger frustration and anxiety throughout the week, or worse, you become resentful of the work that you do.
Of course, it's important to spend time with your friends and maintain a social life, but one should also be careful not to make it feel like a chore.
How should you actually spend your weekends then? The answer is ambiguous. However, by prioritising self-care activities, we can get one step closer.
The first thing one can do to relax is to get proper sleep. As many people remain sleep deprived the whole week, sleeping for more than eight hours can actually help give your brain the rest it needs and rejuvenate your body.
After getting some sleep, you can engage yourself with other enjoyable activities. This can include watching a new movie, catching up with your favourite TV series, reading books, or cooking new dishes. If you have pets in your home, you can take them out for a walk to spend some quality time with them.
One should also use weekends to look after their physical well-being. Meditating, taking swimming lessons, or trying out different types of exercises whenever we get some free time can aid in maintaining good health. You can also try getting a spa treatment or doing skin and hair care. After all, looking after our physical appearances can help us feel good on the inside as well.
Sparing time for oneself on weekends and embracing the art of doing nothing helps to restore energy for the new week. So, it's essential that we don't leave relaxation behind by keeping ourselves occupied all the time.
Nadeemah always wraps her head around the thought of what she's going to eat next and thinks that the glass at her bedside table is half-full. Say hi at: nadeemahafrose13@gmail.com