The weekend is coming up and I am so looking forward to playing a lot of pinball and video games, reading, watching a movie or two, and not much else. Did you see that I didn’t mention anything productive in there? That’s not to say that reading is non-productive, but I plan on reading for pleasure. In short, I’m taking a much needed break. It is interesting how, as a culture, we do not embrace real leisure time. Americans feel this need to fill it all with activity (an idle mind is the devil’s workshop). We can’t have one silent moment and we must show something for the time we have been given. As I have gotten older, I have fully embraced a more European approach to my personal time. I do enjoy keeping active, but I need to balance it with some legit idle time. 

I know that some of you will say “but playing all of those games, isn’t that being active?” and yes, in a way, it is. But I don’t see it in the same way. Playing games is about letting your mind run free, or not. It is about just immersing yourself in an escape from your day to day and not caring about time. We plan our vacations so that we’re scheduled to the millisecond with doing all the things and the idea of taking a day to chill is deemed wasteful. As a society we walk around all stressed out and this may be why. The only difference between our vacations and our work day is location. Think about that for a minute.

I’m going to ask you, the reader, to try something for me. Take a minute – a full 60 seconds – to just sit and breathe deeply. You can imagine you’re in your happy place or where you’re actually located. After that minute reflect on it. How did you feel. Did you like it? Was it weird? Maybe you should try it again. Go for it – it’s all up to you. But giving yourself that 60 second breather may have given you a much needed mini-vacation. At any rate, the next time that you have some time away from work, make sure that you treat yourself to a real break.