Weekends Helplessness

[Waves]

There is a weird pattern in my life I'm trying to understand: during the week I'm occupied with school work, exercise, meditation, cooking, reading,... and since I have a kind of daily structure I feel I'm moving, and even though it's not close to the life I want to have, I have direction.

Then weekends arrive, and even if I have the intention to study or to exercise, my attitude and experience of life changes quite dramatically. Because I have the freedom to choose what to do in a whole day, I feel lost and end up wasting my time. I probably need some time to relax, but honestly I don't work that hard during the week. I just lose direction. I'm still on shaking grounds in terms of my purpose, and that doesn't help. I tell myself that I'm still testing the waters, but I'm doing that in a very apathetic way. 

What I do during the week acts a small compass that gives me momentary direction, but it's also distracting me from the feeling of lack of purpose and direction, and as soon as external obligations fall down, I dive into apathy. Even if I want to work on finding my passion, my mental state is in a place where it looks pointless.

Can you help me see something that I don't? 

[krazzer]

You created weekday habits. Habits are done automatically without to much effort. You don't have any weekend habits. If you wake up and think to yourself, what should I do? Then your mind will only come up with things that satisfy you in the short term. 

So plan ahead, and try to structure it in a way so you can do it every weekend. For example:

• 9:00 get out of bed, and do exercise 
• 9:30 meditate
• 9:45 shower
• 10:00 breakfast
• 10:30 study
• 12:30 lunch
• 13:30 clean the house
• 14:00 free time
   

[nistake]

I quite often experience the same on weekends. During weekdays, it's no problem. I'm busy with work, exercise/yoga, meditating, practising my hobbies, progressing in my art. Then the weekend rolls around with lots of free time and yet I can't bring myself to put hours into my hobbies, meditation, etc. I still do them of course, but not the amount of hours that I'd like to. Obviously it's much easier watching netflix or playing video games.

What I do is that I try not to be neurotic about "distractions". So basically, if I want to play some video games, I'll do that (in moderation of course), no regrets. Then I'll proceed to meditation, art, whatever. I used to try to maximize every weekend and only spend time on 'healthy' habits, but in retrospect it didn't feel good. I'm not at the stage in my life where I can fill a day with only healthy habits and no distractions. Actually, I don't even mind.

[LastThursday]

It's good that you have the contrast between weekdays and weekends. It helps you learn what makes you motivated and gives you direction: having a routine. Without the weekend downtime, you wouldn't have realised that having a routine was beneficial to you.

By the way, you also need downtime. Maybe you are not naturally a very regimented person, so at weekends you get your "freedom" back - enjoy it. Enjoy the contrast between the weekends and the weekdays.

You could also use the weekends to work out why they make you feel bad. Why are you externally driven? Could you be internally driven? What would that mean? Do you need some external force to organise your time and your life? Some questions to go through.

[Waves]

8 hours ago, krazzer said:

your mind will only come up with things that satisfy you in the short term

Yeah you're right, I've noticed this and what I do is just grab my phone and lay in bed for some time. I'll schedule my Saturday on Friday night this weekend, and see how it goes.

@nistake  In the past I would spend the majority of my weekend time playing video games, but now I reduced it to the bare minimum. What I do instead is watch Youtube videos, so it hasn't changed much. I know I need some of that to wind down from the week, but it still feels like wasted time looking back, even though in the moment I wouldn't do anything else. It's a weird state of mind.

@LastThursday The thing is, I don't know if this apathy in my downtime is a by-product/symptom of my lack of direction or just a natural part of the week that I don't want to accept. Probably both. I'll contemplate those questions.

Thank you all, I appreciate your inputs