weekend shame
Weekends are a shameful affair for me sometimes. Seems like a lot of small talk is about what you did the past weekend and what you’re gonna do the next one, and I just basically never have any plans. Sure, occasionally a weekend trip to in-laws, a friend visiting us, or a restaurant reservation. Rarely, museum (when some exhibition catches our eye). But the majority of weekends are just free time, unallocated. I’ll usually go to the gym; I nap; I play video, card or board games sometimes; I study, I work on blogs and websites. Do household stuff. Watch stuff on YT. Do crosswords. But that’s really it, and it just doesn’t make for impressive small talk, at least to people I have nothing in common with, like coworkers. They’ll talk about family, kids, house renovations, the lawn, vacations here and there. I get intimidated by how many plans other people have.
Zoo, cinema, beach trip, indoor pool, watching a soccer or basketball game, trip to this or that city, and more. It makes me insecure at times that I’m wasting my time? They seem to have some plans every weekend. Most of the time, I really have no desire to do any of these and it sounds exhausting. And expensive. But it makes it seem as if I’m just at home doing nothing, which isn’t true.
I think my parents rubbed off on me. We never did family trips; I’m not just talking about big vacations, I mean stuff like: Go to the playground together as a kid. Visit some cafe or restaurant in another city. A weekend trip to somewhere. Going to the zoo, going to a circus, going to the cinema or a museum. The only exposure I had to these things was through media and through school trips. And unfortunately they didn’t have hobbies either, they just sat at home watching TV. That’s it.
All my life I had to come up with things to do at home because they usually didn’t cost anything (poverty), no one would have to pick me up or drive me anywhere (abusive or absent parents), I wouldn’t have to justify leaving the house (abusive parents) and I could do it on my own time and pace (undiagnosed mental, developmental and autoimmune illnesses). And I didn’t have to rely on other people showing up (trust issues).
I don’t know what it feels like to just make plans for the weekend. It doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve had phases when I was trying to fix this and subscribed to many event calendars, and this event app for my region, browsed websites, subscribed to newsletters and all. But nothing ever really fit.
The museum things were for things I wasn’t interested in; I wasn’t one for parties or wine tastings, which were taking up most of the event spots; the other events were for people 60+ about learning tech or making connections while old or about learning to age gracefully. I basically never saw things like poetry slams or trivia nights or book clubs or embroidery/knitting club and stuff, and admittedly, they were often during weeknights or times I happened to be sick or busy with other things. Most things were either for children or pensioners. I cannot win. I even wanted to go try out stuff like water exercise classes at the local pool, but of course the times were absolutely incompatible with employment.
This weekend has been lowkey boring and I couldn’t find anything I really felt drawn to do on Saturday. I wished I could just skip ahead to Monday instead. Sunday was better.