Saturdays Are Tough

Have I written about this before?  Saturdays are always a little tough--there's an incredible urge to take advantage of the free time, and, simultaneously, the need to feel completely relaxed.  Then, of course, there's food to get, kitchens to clean, laundry to wash, and an assortment of preparatory patterns that allow the week to flow out without more than the usual pain in the ass bosses, miscellaneous meetings, and unscheduled late nights.  Then there's the question of what memory, and all those saturdays before, which, somehow cycles back to the normative ideal of complete short term bliss--it is apparently supposed to be the time we all just "are" who we are, as unstructured as it gets. It is highly structured in this way, and this tension has produced multiple unsuccessful saturdays in my past, where I'm always less productive than planned and simultaneously less relaxed than I should be.  Today was a bit of a better day than the usual saturday.   I'm seeking less external affirmation for my internal check that I can, indeed, let go, and just relax, without the impossible feeling that time is receding out from under my feet and that no matter how fast I run, won't be able to keep up.  I haven't been keeping up for a long time after all, so what the fuck good will it do now? 

I read this line somewhere recently about a guy that decided to kill himself.  For whatever reason he came to the mental place necessary to kill himself, but didn't commit the act. 

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As an aside, please, if you are considering harming yourself in anyway, contact someone about it and talk it through.  It is very very easy to get overwhelmed in this world. 

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So he decided it, but then didn't have the energy to go ahead with the thing, and so, sort of saw every day after that as exponentially freer, i.e. he didn't have to keep up with anything, because he was willing to let go of everything in the first place (including, I presume, a glorified version of himself).   The point is that we can't be experts at everything, and just getting to be an expert at one thing is pretty cool, if it happens, not to mention just having one or two very good friends in one's life, instead of 748 of them.  There's lots of really valuable worthwhile endeavors out there--the point is to be involved in one of them.  The which one question doesn't really matter as much.   I'm starting to learn that, in part by letting go of the need for approval from other people--this has actually made it easier for me to speak my mind and get what I need, whereas before I might be more nervous that I'd create an awkward situation, or that there'd be some kind of conflict.  It turns out that moving through conflict with others in a controlled and predictable way is a great skill to have.  I'm not sure I have it, necessarily, but I'm learning to recognize it at least.