You wake up one morning. You’re brushing your teeth, eating breakfast, taking a shower, putting on clothes, and going wherever you need to go. You’re now doing whatever you need to do that day, hoping to get home soon. You get home later than you anticipated, shower, and prepare a large dinner because you forgot to make time for lunch. After you eat, you’re tired and go to bed. Then you wake up and do it all over again. The weekend comes and you’re cleaning up your house and catching up on things you couldn’t get done during the week. Sunday comes and you spend most of the day relaxing, only for the night to come and you have to go to bed early, only to realize you’re not tired because you slept in that day. You get less sleep than the last few nights and start the week like any other weekday but even more tired. You go through your week once, talking to people, walking around, and coming home when you’re too tired to do anything. The weekend comes and you try to have fun, but you’re stressed out about what’s coming up that week. Yep, you’re too tired to do anything.

(Bernt Rostad / Flickr)

You no longer have the childhood you once had where you had time to do things that you want. When I was a child, I would come home at 3 o’clock, have food, do homework, and play games. Then on weekends I would just play games and live life carefree. When my school days started getting longer with morning and after-school music rehearsals, my energy levels to do anything fun were taken away. While the pandemic managed to restore that to some degree, it went away once more restrictions started getting lifted. Once again, I can’t find the energy to do stuff like play games during my free time anymore.

It blows that I can’t find the energy to do fun things in my free time. Whenever I have free time nowadays, I would rather just sit down and listen to relaxing music like Eye of Melian or anything that Charlotte Wessels has put out. It requires less brain power than playing any game. The last thing I want to do after a mentally exhausting day is to do something that requires me to use my head. You’ve probably been in a similar situation. After a long day, the last thing you want to do after talking to a lot of people is to hear more people. If you’re the type to socialize after, good for you. You already have more energy than a lot of people on this planet. For the rest of us, we have no idea how you do it.

Ideally, you would want a four-day school/work week with a three-day weekend. Four days is what we can handle realistically handle before getting worn out. Then you would have the first day of the weekend to do some catching up like finishing any leftover work, chores, and errands. The second day can be used exclusively for downtime such as playing games, going outside, and other things you might not be able to fit into your week. Then the third day can be used to relax a little bit before having to start your week. By then, you’re getting a little sick of your break which gives you the right mindset to start your week. This is what you call the ideal world. This has already been experimented with in other countries with solid results. Why people are against this is beyond me. Sure there might be a few technicalities, but if the pros outweigh the cons, why not? You’ll be able to spend time with the people you care about, take care of yourself, and your productivity will go up. Who doesn’t want that?

(waferboard / Flickr)

I would’ve killed to have a schedule like this during my childhood. At the end of each weekend, I was always dreading going to school the next day. Sometimes I would leave homework off until Sunday night because I didn’t want to dedicate my weekend to doing things I didn’t like. Mondays were dreadful because I felt like I didn’t spend enough time during the weekend to do things I like even if I did them all day. I go through my week, just trying to get by before finally having all day to do stuff I like during the weekends.

Large breaks sort of makeup for this, but once you’re finished school, you no longer get those big breaks during winter, spring, and summer. The weekends are all you get but with more responsibilities, half of it goes away.

Look at you now, you’re sitting there, probably waiting to get back to whatever you were doing. Normally, this is where I would tell you to change your life, think beyond the confines of life, yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah. Yeah, we know this isn’t happening. People expect us to be contributing members of society with real-world responsibilities. Yeah, no one actually likes it when people tell us that. Can’t the real world be about exploration and enjoying yourself? Like in that one commercial where the kid says something along the lines of “I thought growing up means getting away with being a kid.” I wish this was true. We all wish we were never tired to do the things we love.

Picture this: You start your week completely energized, excited to talk to people, get your goals done, and other things to be a good human. Then your three-day weekend comes. First, you clean your place while jamming out to some tunes from your childhood. You also do your homework just to get it over with just like before. Then the next day comes. You’re walking in the park, talking to even more people and learning from them. Then the next day comes, you relax, talk to more people, and finally get prepared for another exciting week. That’s the dream right there.