Creekside on Saturdays

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

The past few Saturdays, Seda and I have kept our pact to sleep in, pack a picnic lunch, and gather our dog Leo for an excursion. We stop for pastries and coffee along the way.

At the park well outside of town, we pick our path through the woods and walk for an hour or so. We greet old friends—huckleberry, sword fern, and maidenhair fern. We meet new ones too, snapping pictures to remember them by. Seda and I envision ways to replicate these plant communities on the land we are blessed to steward. Sometimes we walk in silence, and sometimes we talk nonstop.

The ecstasy of a Saturday truly off did not come easily. I bucked against it for some time, sure I had “too much to do” in my business and garden. But I had read the statistics. I get that our productivity goes up when we have a little time off. And then one week, we gave it a trial-run.

Laundry, cooking, cleaning, email-checking—all of that is done before or after the big day. On Saturday, we choose in the moment what we want to do, and we do it in a slow, steady flow.

I am so grateful that we persisted in our commitment to joy, creating space in our calendar for a full day off. Friday and Sunday are bustling for sure, but that oasis of a Saturday is something I look forward to all week long. I respect the many traditions that make this a norm. Perhaps it’s harder when trying to create the ritual on one’s own. So worth it, though.

What are your thoughts? When do you make time off, and how do you protect it?