For years I have suffered with a strange sort of anxiety. An anxiety that only hits me during my free time.
I, like many people work long hours, and look forward to having a weekend without time constraints or work pressures. But when I was in this supposed free time and able to relax, I would feel anything but.
After a week of deadlines, employee and customer expectation not to mention my own pressure to achieve, I felt almost paralysed.
I would experience a general feeling of being unsettled to the point of sickness. I was both physically and mentally uncomfortable. My mind seemed to both race and switch off during these times. Firstly I was conscious that I had to find something of value to do to warrant the time off, this would then slowly build to real a impatience as I struggled to find anything that I believed to be of value, as the free time I had was short and precious.
There was also an added pressure to this. The feeling that because of my long working hours during the week, I had little time to spend with my girlfriend and so a feeling that I needed to make the most of the little time we had together weighed heavily upon me. I also have an elderly Mother which I like to visit during this time as well.
What started off as supposed free time presented itself in my head as a pressure not to disappoint my loved ones. Eventually after the inevitable self disappointment I would shut down and invariably plant myself in front of the television to watch some sort of Netflix box set series.
There`s a strangely comforting feeling about watching a box set. You know exactly what`s expected of you. One episode follows another and all your stress about decisions are taken away from you. Genuinely during these freetime anxiety periods I have watched some real shit! But it allowed some sort of mental switch off from the anxiety of what I should be doing to enjoy myself.
During this time my character difference was alarming. During my working week I was full of confidence, never short of ideas and what I would consider to be highly sociable. Fast forward to the weekend and I was a shadow of myself, which would rankle, as this added to the feeling of disappointment for my partner who was not really experiencing me as the person I knew I was. I would then begin to secretly long for the working week to begin again, as that was the time I would feel myself. I never liked the person I was at the weekend.
I suffered from debilitating feelings on Sunday evenings and would do everything I could not to leave the house on a Sunday evening, as I believed I needed to mentally prepare myself for the week ahead, but now I look back I was just longing for the week to begin as I could regain the positivity and mental well being I would feel at work.
I have always been majorly into self analysis and understanding behaviour, but for years I had never applied it to myself in what would be described as my free time behaviour. I was happy to analyse myself and all to eagerly others during my working time, but this inquisitive side of me seemed to be paralyzed during these times.
So I blindly continued on.
It`s hard for your partner in this situation as for most of the time they will see you in this rather flat semi-responsive state. Which in turn would lead to arguments as she would get more and more impatient with me, without either of us truly understanding what I was feeling. I couldn`t blame her for feeling that I didn`t want to be there, as there was an element of truth in this. But I did want to spend time with my partner it`s just that I didn`t want to be the person I was being with her.
Finally after a long time oblivious to what was really happening to me, I decided to look into this behaviour and see if I could draw any other parallels with other experiences people had.
I began by examining my memories of my Father who has now sadly passed away. When I was a child, time off really didn`t exist for him. Although he rarely worked on the weekend, he would spend all his time in the garage preparing for work on Monday. He was a builder and would generally go about some sort of carpentry or some other style of work under the guise that it was a necessity for work. He would have the odd friend visit during these times but it was definitely a building site type atmosphere. He would rarely go on holiday with us as a family. Instead choosing to place my Mum, Sister and I on a camp site for a week and then collect us at the end of it. Rarely would he ever even stay a night. There were times as he got older that he would take a holiday. Once with myself as a fifteen year old and a couple of times with my Mum. These holiday`s would invariably be a tour of France, but it was judged on it`s success by how many miles could be covered in one day. Before we would camp for the evening we would` ve driven for hours after which we would finally set up on a site only to rise again early in the morning to drive again for hundreds of miles.
I examined my memories of his behaviour when he retired, as we had always joked that if he ever retired he would go mad. It turns out that his saving grace was my business. Now I look back, I think my business was instrumental in his ability to retire. Within a week of retiring from his work he would arrive at my warehouse by 7am to stay all day until approximately 4pm. Not really a surprise that these were his working hours during his working life. It was during the following years that I truly began to understand and see my Father for who he really was. He was most happy in a work enviroment. The sense of camaraderie and the fact that although his physical contributions to the day to day business might`ve been slight, his need to belong and feel a sense of achievement was of paramount importance. During these times he was full of life and storytelling and had a genuine funny side which I had never experienced before. In a work type enviroment he knew exactly what was expected of him and he allowed his true self out. He still suffered from his usual temper tantrums that he or more to the point everyone else would suffer from, but they would go as soon as they came, unlike at home where they could hang around for days.
I asked other people about their experiences of their weekends. Not just what they had done but how they felt about it. All of the people I spoke to work in time segmented 9-5 style jobs. Most of them seemed to be happy with their weekends but nearly all of them seemed to have a tinge of regret of about either not achieving something or just wasting the weekend away. The odd exception seemed to be based around some sort of successful task completion, not necessarily something they would enjoy out of choice, but a DIY or personal project that they knew needed to be completed. There was a sense of achievement that had given these few a confidence that wasn`t in the others who had just relaxed their time away.
I decided to try and understand how I could keep control of my anxiety and bring the same sort of confidence and feeling of well being that is evident in my work and transfer it to my free time. If I could identify the things that I enjoy as a person, and could initially schedule that into my weekend, almost like a routine, this could be interspersed with open free time and at least maybe I could get a handle on it.
I`m an absolute petrol head and have a car which I very rarely drive. So as I always awake early weekday or not, I decided that instead of sat watching aimless television on Sunday mornings waiting for my girlfriend to get up, I would give myself an approximate window for which to take my car out for a drive. It was liberating actually doing something that I personally enjoyed and actually did have the time for. Suddenly it began to feel like I had more time available to me.
Although I`ve never been a great fan of exercise, I am aware of both the mental and physical benefits it brings me, and I always feel much better after doing it. Some sort of sense of achievement not to mention the chemical positives. Again I scheduled this in early in the morning on the weekends and even took up yoga!
I know what you`re thinking. It looks like I`m taking all the fun and spontaneity out of my free time, but it felt like the opposite. I mean for once in my life by bringing order to my free time I was actually doing the things that made me feel good about myself.
How can we after spending such a large percentage of our time in an organised format at work, are we supposed to successfully change our natural organisational habits in a blink of an eye. I mean we are conditioned in this way from a child. We go to school at a certain time, we eat at regimented times and then we finally go to work at set times. Even are entertainment is time scheduled. Maybe we look forward to our favourite program, again at a scheduled time. It really should be no surprise that when faced with unplanned free time we can feel like we`ve wasted it.
To sum up. Anyone who suffers from weekend anxiety or just feel that their weekend is under utilised and frustrating just give it a go. Plan your free time in advance around the people and activities you enjoy. You can make these routines as detailed and scheduled as you feel comfortable with, but it genuinely has given me a second wind in my personal life.
I used to feel that my confidence only really came from my achievements or daily interactions at work, but this process has allowed me to take the same positive person out of what was my only truly comfortable enviroment and transfer that person into what feels like a totally new area of my life,
I even planned out enough time to write this, which I never would`ve believed I had time for.