The Long Weekend Didn't Fix It. Here's Why.

It’s the Tuesday after a long weekend. How are you feeling?

Rested?

Tired?

Overwhelmed?

Content?

Exhausted?

Energized?

Maybe you enjoyed yourself, or maybe you were busy. Maybe you enjoyed yourself while busy. Maybe you did absolutely nothing and either A. enjoyed that, or B. felt guilty about it.

Something I often notice in those I work with (and sometimes myself) is that we can come back after a long weekend and still not feel rested. I think we have all heard or said: “That weekend wasn’t long enough.” I think it’s safe to say it’s pretty normal to come back from a long weekend wishing it had been longer or feeling it somehow wasn’t enough.

We experience this and often assume we should have spent our weekend differently. But I don't think that's the problem. More often, the issue isn't the weekend itself. It's the way we've learned to move through our lives. It wasn't the weekend that left you exhausted. It was what followed you into it.

We Think Rest Is About Time

We think that to rest, we need time. Many of us believe that if we just had more time, we'd finally feel rested. Our culture teaches us that vacations, weekends, and evenings are rest in and of themselves. Having time does not equate to rest. Time creates the opportunity for rest, and you have to take it. That is something many of us struggle with.

Urgency Doesn’t Clock Out

You stop working, and the urgency you have structured your life around doesn’t stop. The urgency just transforms and turns into:

“I need to make the most of this weekend.”

“I should clean.”

“I should see friends.”

“I should relax.”

“I should feel grateful.”

“I should meal prep.”

“I should finally respond to all those texts.”

All of a sudden, that free, unstructured weekend we craved turns into the week that made us crave it.

Why This Happens

We’ve learned to use urgency as motivation, and we have trained ourselves to respond to any sense of discomfort with action. So when we feel a stirring of urgency, and there is no work to do, urgency finds new work. Not necessarily because you want to, but because you don’t know how else to structure your time. Your system has learned that movement feels safer than stillness.

The Cost

We assume more time off means more restoration, but what we often get instead is more time to notice anxiety, restlessness, guilt, or emptiness. The weekend didn't create these feelings. It just gave them the time and space to be noticed.

Those feelings aren't asking to be eliminated. They are asking to be understood. They often point us toward something we've been too busy to notice: a need we've ignored, an emotion we've outrun, or a part of ourselves that hasn't had much room to speak.

Instead, many of us respond by trying to drown them out. We stay busy, doomscroll, reorganize the house, or reach for whatever distraction is most available. We become frustrated because nothing changes, but it's difficult to change what we won't spend time with. The very feelings that could help us understand what we need are the ones we work hardest to avoid.

A Different Approach

The reason many of us don't feel rested isn't that we rested the wrong way. It's because we brought the same urgency that exhausted us during the week into the very time we hoped would restore us.

Instead of asking: “Why don’t I feel rested?”

Ask: “What do I need this weekend?”

Don’t let urgency translate your needs into productivity. You probably don’t need to reorganize your whole home to rest.

After a long weekend, or really any weekend, ask yourself: “Did I spend the weekend responding to urgency or responding to what mattered?”

Rest isn’t something that can only begin after you’ve finally earned it. It begins when we intentionally don’t let urgency decide what enough looks like.

If this resonates with you, this is exactly what I'll be exploring in my upcoming workshop, Slowing Down in a City That Never Stops. Together, we'll look at why urgency becomes our default way of moving through life and how we can begin defining "enough" differently.

Learn more about the workshop here: Learn More

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