It’s a beautiful spring Sunday, my first day off in several weeks, and I can’t quite say that I am excited to wake up early to go into the office tomorrow morning.
However, this will be one of my last early Monday mornings. I have 5 more until I will no longer have Monday morning clinic. Ever, if things work out well.
I’m realizing that I probably need to make some tentative plans for how I will use my extra time out of the office.
On the one hand, I won’t be able to avoid work altogether. Mondays bring a lot of messages and patient emails, for issues that came up over the weekend. I expect I will be sitting at the computer for several hours on Mondays if I am not going to neglect my patients.
In theory, I would also like to use some of this time to get a little more reading in. A dedicated hour or so to look at the latest journals would probably make me feel a little better about keeping up with my work.
On the other hand, I am taking a pay cut by canceling my clinic time, so I’d like to spend the extra time doing something that will support my non-work life. In theory, I should take this time to pursue potential post-retirement interests, though right now I just want to get take care of all the things that are neglected when I am working long hours.
The list of potential ways to spend this day (mostly) off is long and varied and somewhat contradictory:
- Sleep in and feel more rested.
- Get more exercise, probably with an early morning walk in the summer. Or maybe an class of some sort.
- Attend morning services.
- Take a 3-day weekend to visit my mother (with an early Monday morning flight back).
- Take a 3-day weekend away with Mr. PiN.
- Spend a little time working on the house: decluttering, managing the garden (totally neglected in the past few years), maybe even attending to some house projects that have been put off for years.
- Socialize with some of my retired friends.
- Relearn how to relax at home off the computer.
- Perhaps even finally feel I have the time to pursue something off my curious list.
I am pretty sure I can manage 2 or 3 of these on any given Monday, but not all of them.
If you had an extra day off work, what would be on your list of ways to spend that day?