Our theme for the month of June is “older and wiser.” Writers were asked to write a response to one of their previous pieces. Today, Mitchell responds to his November 2022 post, “On Days Off.”
I try to wake up before 9 a.m. to keep my sleep schedule semi-consistent. I’m always exhausted but I hate the idea of sleeping in during the weekend only to find myself wide awake, tossing and turning at 2 a.m. on a Sunday night.
On days off, my girlfriend and I try to do at least one thing or go out somewhere. Sometimes, that’s just watching a movie at Alamo Drafthouse, going to a baseball game, or going to a coffee shop…to do work.
The weekend coffee shop visits have decreased. This March I stopped working multiple jobs for the first time since I graduated. When I wrote my piece on time off in 2022, my call to action for myself was to separate work and free time, and I’m afraid I’ve done just the opposite.
My hobby has now become my full-time job.
Now, there’s not much separation between work and leisure. Is watching a Braves game on a Saturday work? It could be if there’s something bizarre that happens during a game. Is turning on a Shohei Ohtani at bat leisure? Only when he doesn’t do something historic, I suppose.
Although the line between what is work has been blurred, I do technically have more clearly defined days off. The hours I spent during weekends researching odd baseball stories were shifted to the weekdays and, for the first time since high school, weekends actually became days off.
But I still don’t know what to do with them. On one hand, I like having “not doing anything” penciled in on a regular basis. On the other, I feel like I’ve conditioned myself to always be doing something work-related. Days off feel unproductive.
A year and a half ago, days off were more unpredictable. When I was still working retail, I might not know the next week’s schedule until Friday. Then, unless I specifically asked for a certain day off, making plans in advance was impossible, which meant making plans was impossible.
Now I know weekends are always free, but aside from a few weddings, I haven’t made the effort to plan anything beyond the next week.
I’ve also struggled to use PTO. Last year I would’ve lost an entire week had the company I worked for not let me either roll over it or take it as an extra payment. I took the extra payment.
One misconception I’ve made for myself is that days off should be taken to do something grand, but recently a friend told me he took days off just to edit videos, and I was shocked that had never occurred to me.
In 2022, an inconsistent work schedule juggling multiple jobs led to me not knowing what to do with the one day off I had. In 2024, I have more free time than I’ve had in eight years, but now my work has become intertwined with one of my primary hobbies.
How do you fix this? My first step is to actually take more days off, even if it means just hanging out in my apartment all day on a random Wednesday. My second step is to find a new hobby that isn’t a sport. I need to write more. I need to read more. I need to get out more.
We’ll see how well I follow this in 2026.
Mitchell Barbee graduated from Calvin University with a B.A. in writing in 2021. Originally from Boone, North Carolina, he is currently residing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He enjoys hanging out with the few friends who stayed, wearing grey hoodies, and hoping that he doesn’t get sucked into the nightly wormhole of watching a baseball game.