Working for the weekend

Friday evening - that's two days ago - Dad stopped by my bedroom door to say goodnight and something else; something no unemployed twenty-two year old still living at home hears from their parents.

"Why don't you take the weekend off?"  I was taken aback.  Perhaps part of my stronger work ethic of late has been brought on by a freeloader's guilt or to prove to my family I am not a waste of school tuition and attempts to integrate me into society. I pish-poshed Dad's suggestion with the wave of my smaller-sized Dad hands, honestly believing weekends don't really apply to me for the present. He said again, "it might be good to have a break from the writing and the job hunt. You're always going." I never thought my family saw me this way. I thought that when they think of me it's more of a kid playing with sticks in the mud situation. I felt appreciated, though undeserving of a "weekend off". I always listen to my Dad's advice but I rarely need it. I'm sorry, that should be heed it. Maybe it was because it was permitted, or simply to appease the unnerved glint in a worried father's eyes, that I did indeed take it easy this weekend.

And by 'take it easy', I mean, 'go fucking mad'.

Saturday was filled with cyclonic thought - many centred on the origins of commodities like vinegar and pepper. Sunday was incidentally and almost exclusively 'Insect Thoughts' day. Preoccupied with all the hard-hitting questions of great worldly consequence, I found I wasn't fully able to enjoy typical leisure activities. In fact, they felt like a chore to the extent where I started to procrastinate by bounding to other leisurely pursuits. It was hedonism gone mad. Perhaps this is what Russell Brand's drug-addled, sex-addicted past was like," I pondered. "Only in place of drugs: pringles. And instead of sex: Ira Glass".

Maybe I shouldn't have "planned" to have the weekend off. I actually wrote a list of things to do like I would for any day of the week. Perhaps it was this very consuming need to be productive that Dad wanted me to abstain from. Or again, perhaps, I didn't feel I had earned my weekend. The backstory is this week I was absolutely pepped to discover and prewrite projects for a short film competition and TV series pitch which are both coming up in March. The deadlines are so near and I hoped to have recruited a whole team for a location scout for a locked in script by now, is my improbable dream. I'm waiting to hear back from a potential partner regarding all this and wish he was as enthusiastic as me.

All weekend I had this quote playing in the back of my mind. It's from Andy Warhol:

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

That's how I should have spent my weekend - writing, which I actually enjoy. And my stress levels are best managed when I have ample time to plan, write, edit, etc. Dad might work at his computer all week but my leisure is work***NOT PAID*** and guilt has been gnawing away at my insides. Double-whammy-ironic-guilt also festered in my pancreatic region when I wrote some thoughts and reflections and jokes and loglines down after I vowed not to.

Dad didn't like seeing me uptight or glued to my keyboard but for now, that is who I am. And it is doing a better of job of keeping me sane. I still used my weekend and by any other's account did enjoyable things. I walked, ran, swam, drove, shopped, spent time with family, talked to dear friends, photographed, painted, cooked,  read The Silver Linings Playbook start to finish, watched the complete series of Extras, read the paper's arts columns and liftouts, did a cryptic crossword, ate delicious food, listened to my favourite podcasts, revelled in dreamy music and even moongazed, cuppa-tea-in-hand...

But I genuinely tasted insanity and saw things and felt like a ferret all without the assistance of drugs or alcohol. From whence did this maternal concern for drone bees come? From WHENCE?

C-breezin