Weekend Recovery

I feel like school has been a marathon of various activities in the past few weeks and continues to follow this pattern... Only 7 days until Thanksgiving break! Between now and then we have a music program, Literacy First walk-throughs, a fund raiser party, Thanksgiving staff luncheon, a presentation to the school board, and I supposed in the midst of that I'm going to teach my students a thing or two as well. I've really been cherishing my weekends since my weeks have been jam-packed with school events.

I'd been really feeling bad for myself and wasn't enjoying weekends just a few weeks ago. In the past year five close friends have moved out of state. These were pretty much all of those friends that I'd spend my weekends with, call up to go shopping with, grab dinner and a movie with, etc. A lot of my other friends that live nearby are married and / or have kids so that changes things as well... They're not quite as spur-of-the-moment as the others were. I've been throwing a lot of pity parties lately... I'll even admit that I was dreading a few weekends because I knew I had nothing to do. The work week at least kept me busy and occupied so that I forgot about my lack of friends nearby.

Then, school got really crazy (again) and I realized that maybe my lack of things to do on the weekends was a blessing in disguise. First off, I've spent wayyy less money on entertainment and going out to eat. (I'm telling myself that this saved money counts toward my travel fund to go see my friends.) Second, I've enjoyed the time of rest and relaxation. Yesterday I cleaned my house, cleaned out my car, worked out, went to church, made some yummy pizza rolls I found on Pinterest, watched some K-State football, talked to a close friend on the phone, shopped a teensy bit, and then watched "Back to the Future 2" with my little brother. All in all, it was a splendid day and I didn't really feel bad for myself at any point in the day.

I'm not saying that my pity parties are over or that I don't miss my friends, but I'm going to try my best to not spend my quiet weekends alone feeling sorry for myself. I'm going to (try to) think of them as a blessing and a reward for work I do during the week. Weekends are my "me time" right now... Time for wearing sweats, watching movies, painting my nails, phone calls with friends across the time zones, and online "shopping dates." Eventually, I hope to get out a meet new people and spend my weekends being a bit more social, but for now I am going focus on keeping my head above water at school during the week and taking time to recover during those two lovely days off.

What is your weekend recovery?