mastering your weekends

I find a lot of value in taking breaks - in stepping back from the work zone, breaking out of that headspace completely, and finding new perspective. Because often, it's very easy to lose perspective, isn't it? We get so wrapped up in what we're doing, and it can be a wonderful thing to have something that you genuinely enjoy so much that you lose yourself in it, but it can also become a dangerous thing when other things that are of greater importance slip out of our priority zone because of it.

Things like properly and lovingly taking care of ourselves, spending time with our loved ones, looking for and discovering new ways to help a planet that is deeply in need of love and care. When we become so caught up in our own to-do lists, sometimes these things, without our even noticing it, seem to slip into the background noise.

For me, taking a break, stepping back, that's how I remind myself that life doesn't exist within work, work exists within life, and oh man is life expansive: it's vast and multifaceted, and it demands our full attention. And sometimes, in order to give our whole lives the attention it needs, it becomes necessary for us to take a step back: to take stock, reexamine, reorganize.

If you've been around on this blog for a bit, there's a good chance you've heard me talk about going off grid, unplugging and getting outside, getting away from work and the internet, etc. But over the weekend I was thinking about how this isn't always practical, and it doesn't usually need to be a drastic move.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that we don't usually need to drop everything and disconnect from our work for a month to go live in a beach hut in Bali. Though...honestly I'd be down...BUT, my point is, when the goal becomes regaining perspective and fostering a healthy relationship with your creative work? I believe there's a more sustainable way to cultivate this as a lifestyle, not just as a once a year getaway.

And this weekend, as I was out with my husband, grabbing a cup of coffee and a bite to eat in a bookstore cafe, it hit me: get intentional with your weekends.

In fact, master them.

The weekend, for most people and even entrepreneurs, are typically when we stop working and take a breather. But when was the last time we got super intentional about what we were going to do with our weekends? And I'm not talking about making plans to binge watch something on Netflix.

So often weekends simply mean "no work." They are in essence, an absence of something. And, well...that's it. "No work."

...Now what?

What if we got super intentional? What if we used these two days to really hone in on what would replenish us, body, mind, and spirit, the absolute most? What if we were deliberate about how we spent this time, and how we used it?

See, sitting there in that coffee shop, laughing and talking with my husband, it made me realize: this is it. This...this is life. All these little moments are the fabric that makes up reality, the most important things - not things at all, but faces and hearts - these are the most important parts of being alive. And even though I enjoy working hard, I need, need, need, to not get so caught up in the ever popular "grind" that I lose...this. The most important part. The sweetest thing. The cream filling of life.

I want to work hard and enjoy it, but I also want to always, always, always be aware of the fact that there are a few things that are more important than what I make: things like spending time with people you love, making memories with them, helping others, helping the planet, volunteering our time to a cause - all of these things are what fuels what we do. Take that away and everything we make falls flat, because it's missing a very important ingredient: life.

So I encourage you to take your weekend and get super intentional with it. Use it to gain perspective, to refuel, to breathe and take stock. To remind yourself that your craft is a part of your life, your life isn't just a part of your craft. So enjoy, savor, go out for a coffee with someone you love - replenish. We don't have to take a massive block of time to unplug, we can do that sustainably and consistently every single week by mastering our weekends, getting intentional with them - treating them as a sacred space...a place in which we can be reborn.

And perhaps even use them to take a step back and look at all the things we have made...how cool that is, how creative we are, how wondrous and beautiful a privilege it is to even create in the first place. Maybe we should take a little pause and just think about how grateful we are for that.

What's your favorite weekend ritual? What is one way you would like to get more intentional with how you spend your weekends? What's one thing that replenishes your soul and helps you gain perspective?

stay stoked!

kate