Waking The Weekend Warrior

I love the weekends. There's something about the promise of two whole days filled with the promise of not having to get up with an alarm clock, of being able to relax. I always feel like a kid on Christmas morning. (By the same token, Sunday night always makes me feel like the day after Christmas. You've opened your presents, the anticipation is gone, and now it's back to the real world.)

Think about the possibility of a day where you could spend the whole day in pajamas. If you don't have anywhere to go, especially on these cold New York winter days, what's better than snuggling up with a movie or a book? (Quick sidebar: Think of how much workplace productivity could improve if they had a pajama day. Of course, there'd probably be that person who didn't participate and then you'd feel like a dummy. But they'd be wearing gut pinching panty hose and heels, so who's the dummy now?) I always have a pile of things I have been meaning to get to: Magazine subscriptions that I'm not sure why I signed up for because I never read them, a new book, a Netflix movie that's been sitting there for 6 months (We're really getting our money's worth there!), or my DVR which so thoughtfully holds my shows until I can get to them. Since I cannot possibly get to all of that in one weekend, I now have to eeny, meeny, miney, mo choose. (And you thought this was only for elementary school children. See how handy it is even now?)

The problem, however, is that the Weekend Warrior wants to come out. Since you don't have enough hours in a weekday, weekends are where you get everything else done. The Weekend Warrior is your inner ambitious self that wants to tackle these things that you don't get to. My inner warrior is now causing me a lot of conflict with my inner sluggish schlub. I can't be leisurely AND productive. I can usually smack her back into submission and continue on reading my book but there are sometimes she just won't be denied.

On those times when my inner warrior is stronger than my lazy self, I AM really productive. Which is a great feeling. But I know, no matter what I clean or organize today, it'll just need to be done again at some point. For instance, I really SHOULD clean under my stove. I'd probably find that's where the toilet paper troll has been living. This is the type of project my weekend warrior lives for. But I really don't want to tackle that so I distract her with cleaning under the microwave (How does a counter get so dirty when there's something covering it?) and doing copious amounts of laundry.

You'd think the easy solution would be to give your Weekend Warrior one day and keep the other for yourself. Which does happen sometimes. Other weeks are so busy that you are determined not to do anything other than the absolute necessary cleaning and spend the rest of the weekend relaxing. (Or it wasn't that busy but you WANT to do nothing the whole weekend and convince yourself you deserve it. I like this scenario.) Otherwise, you could spend your whole weekend being productive. You'd have a clean, organized house but come Monday morning, you'd wonder where your weekend went. It's like walking a tightrope to keep that balance.

I saw a t-shirt that was similar to how I feel about this. It said: Inside of me there's a skinny girl trying to get out. I usually shut the bitch up with chocolate. Mine would say: Inside of me there's a Weekend Warrior trying to get out. I usually shut her up by tying her to a chair and covering her mouth with duct tape so I can hear my movie. I'm not sure that would all fit on a t-shirt though.