UNITED STATES—There are 24 hours in a day, but for the life of me I am constantly complaining that there is not enough time in a day. I’ve had this conversation several times, where if you actually break-down the day, there is very little time to one’s self. You sleep 7-8 hours, you work 7-10 hours, you commute 1-2 hours, and that leaves you with perhaps 6-7 hours to yourself.

That’s not a lot America, and if you have children, and you’re attending sporting events or activities you can slice that time in half to about 3 hours max. I’m referring to those of us who typically work five days a week and you have Saturdays and Sundays off. Some may argue that is a good thing, others might argue it’s better to have days off during the week. That is a debate that we can hold for another time.

Me personally, I have no quarrels about working on every day of the week except SATURDAYS! I don’t do Saturdays, it’s my one day off during the week, and for 24 hours I don’t want any stress from work, school, family or anyone else. So with my one day off there is a ton of things traveling through my mind. First, I want to sleep in if at all possible as long as I can. I’m not trying to sleep until noon, but if I can get at least 8 hours, I’m happy.

Second, it’s time to plan out the day, I want to be out and about; the notion of being stuck in the house drives me crazy unless I’m just burnt out exhausted from a chaotic work and school week. This is the day I try to run errands that I need to do which include banking, paying bills, grocery shopping, picking up household essentials, visiting the mall, the movies, anything to entertainment me for a few hours.

Before you know it, it’s after 5 p.m. and the day is nearly over. Just this past weekend, I was debating rather I wanted to watch a movie or not, and I keep thinking about the time frame. How much time I have? How long the movie will be? How much time I will have left over to do X, Y and Z? I know I’m not the only person who has encountered this. It took me awhile, but I came to a realization: I need to stop being so concerned with how much TIME I have on my day off.

If there is something that I want to do, I have to do it and just do it without questioning things. I know I’m not the only American that grapples with such a dilemma, but I’m trying to raise awareness that we should NOT allow time to dictate our lives, when we have free time. That is the key point: free time. That is time where you don’t have to work, you don’t have school, there are not pressing responsibilities to be complete, the time is all yours and you can do what you please as the time allots it. Time is not endless, we only have so much in a given day, but worrying non-stop about what you can and cannot do, only causes you to waste that time. So guess what? Don’t do it!