Weekends for me have been weird, in that they actually exist. Up until this last month or so, my life had bee pretty basic. For a long time (too long), it was all about work. I was a manager at a retail shop, so my weekends were all about work….and so were my weekdays. I quit that job, picked up something part-time, and while I still work most weekends, the hours are much fewer and the stress is nonexistent. Most of the time, I spend the early part of my day writing, the later part of the day at work or at my boyfriend’s. Weekends were similar, so they were all kind of the same, except on weekends, I was more likely to veg with TV show marathons with my roommate, as she has the typical “9-5″ and weekends were her time to veg.
But suddenly, there’s been stuff on the weekends. I’ve been having what is commonly known as a social life. A friend is in from the Netherlands, so we’ve been doing lots with her. There’s been trips to the zoo, and then there was a baby shower, and we’ve been doing “girls’ night out”s at a local bar that does Friday night karaoke. This weekend, there was a wedding, and next weekend, I scored some awesome cheap tickets to the opening day of the Ren Faire. These are all awesome things, insanely fun, vibrant, and I love my friends. But there’s just one problem.
It’s totally killing any hope of writing on the weekends.
By the time Sunday rolls around, I haven’t made any blog posts, I’ve barely written anything on my current WIP, I definitely haven’t been editing, and I’ve been completely silent in the world of the Intrawebz. That makes me feel pretty guilty, though that’s the funny thing about when you turn what you love into your career. You love to do it, and you do it whenever you have the time, but the thing that you usually forget is that it’s still work, no matter how much you love it, you have to take a break. Guilty as I may feel about not having a day when I’m throwing myself out there, where I’m not answering emails, where the festivities of my current weekends has swept me up entirely and I haven’t even touched my laptop…I hope they keep coming. They’re a good thing and I’m very glad for them, and the Intrawebz and my book sales and my emails are all going to be there on Monday, where I can jump right back in and get back to work (and that’s why I actually looooove Mondays the way I do!).
Anyone else out there feel a little guilty when you have your own weekends jam packed with “the Real World?” How do you best handle juggling writerly fun with social fun?
