6 Months Of 3 Day Weekends

It’s now been 6 months since I dropped my Monday clinics, and I think it may be worth reviewing how well I used that extra day out of the office.

When I first planned to cut back on work, I wrote about potential ways to use the extra day, like visiting my mother more often, going for short getaways with Mr. PiN, working on my front garden (a mess for several years), socializing with friends, and maybe decluttering.

To be honest, I was hoping for the more glamorous uses of my time.

Looking at the numbers, there were 18 Mondays that I would otherwise have worked. This takes into account Federal holidays, hospital rotations, and vacation time, where a Monday out of clinic was not due to my cutting back.

What did I actually do with my extra time off over those 18 days?

I slept in a bit longer, probably only an hour on average. I appreciated the extra rest, and Mr. PiN very much enjoys not getting up early to get me to work.

I did visit my mother for one long weekend.

I socialized with one friend, my very first Monday off. That’s it. (To be fair, I almost went to a museum with another friend, until she realized she had a doctor’s appointment).

Out of those 18 Mondays, I spent 4 at my own doctor appointments or medical treatments.

I used 2 Mondays to reschedule workouts with my trainer, when Saturday didn’t work for one or the other of us.

I was able to extend my vacations, so that I could travel on Sunday and catch up on Monday, rather than doing that all one day earlier.

A few weeks I worked on decluttering, especially at the end of the year; two weeks were spent taking care of business for my best friend’s estate; there were some afternoons with house work too.

For two Mondays, I noted I was either tired or cranky, or worn out by addressing some of the to-do chores I have been putting off for years. I didn’t really feel I got the most benefit out of those extra days.

I absolutely did work each and every one of these Mondays. I stopped counting time at the computer, but it’s fair to say I spent 2-4 hours each day, between checking messages, catching up on results, and attending meetings.

Overall, I think I got a lot of use out of my time off, but it wasn’t the unicorns and rainbows I was hoping for.

How I hoped I’d feel with my extra time off work.

What next?

I am sure that going forward, I will do many of the same activities on my Mondays off: work, medical appointments if needed, house chores, decluttering.

However, I do feel like I am leaving some opportunities on the table. I would like to concentrate on getting more exciting activities on my calendar.

Visits home will likely wait until warmer weather, as will gardening. I can see trying to play tennis in the morning with my fellow student as a possibility. Weekends out of town with Mr. PiN will need to wait until he’s no longer fixing up his parents’ house.

I’d love to work on some of the aspirational things on my Curious list, though anything that signs me up for lessons runs into issues wit my hospital weeks.

What about Wednesday W’s?

I’m wondering if it is worth continuing my Wednesday W updates, which are really reports of what I’ve done on that Monday off.

On the one hand, the posts are easy to put together, keep me honest about what I’m doing with my time, and give me an excuse to save silly memes from other parts of the Internet.

On the other hand, if I concentrate on documenting only my progress towards aspirational goals, my posts might be very short, and depressing. Also, I’m running out of memes.

What do you think? Continue the Wednesday W posts? Let them go? Or make them less frequent, say monthly?