Katrina Onstad is a Canadian journalist and novelist.
If you're in the mood for a blushing art house romance, you'll fall for it, too.
It used to be that wealthy people were the leisure class, and having time off was a status symbol. That's switched now: being busy and overworked is the reality for many white-collar workers, and there's a kind of perverse currency to that, competitive busy-ness. At the other end of the income scale, there's a swath of lower-wage workers who are underemployed or unemployed, with too much unwanted leisure, and zero status for that. For shift workers, devices mean they're accessible in ways they weren't before, susceptible to that call from the boss to log more hours.
I know Stephen King is uncompromising on the idea that writers should practise their craft every single day, and it clearly works for him. Personally, I relish a day off with some boredom; it gives me space to feel the world, observe, stir up the epiphanies, which I need if I'm creating fiction. On the other hand, I'm a big advocate for beauty and creativity on the weekend, which can be incredibly rejuvenating.
We know that our bodies suffer from overwork and lack of leisure: anxiety, mental-health issues - we're not designed to work more than about 40 hours a week. Our systems wear out and the quality of the work suffers. After 50 hours, it crashes and burns.
On a societal level, what happens to community when people don't have time to gather or connect, in person, not just over social media? Not having time off becomes a public-interest issue. It means the erosion of social bonds, less civic contribution and participation. Loneliness is on the rise in North America; we find ourselves too busy for true connection, prioritizing work over life.
We know that people who work without breaks get tired, introduce errors, get sick and miss out on life. Make no mistake: those staff room hammocks are designed to keep you in them on the weekend.
On the business side, innovative leaders are beginning to wake up to the fact that this non-stop work trend is bad for business: Google Ireland tested a program called Dublin Goes Dark, where employees turned over their phones at the end of each work day. It seems like a sea change is ahead.
Sunday blues often hit because the weekend was only about shopping and chores. If you can clear up some of that domestic detritus on weeknights, you might reclaim some time for what matters. Maybe the laundry can wait until Monday.
There's something about the weekend, even for non-religious people, that feels sacred, so a violation of that sanctified time is almost a betrayal, something blasphemous. The sabbath is the edict to break from work. It was God's call-out to the slave to protect an identity beyond labourer - no production and consumption, just one day a week.
Many white-collar workers are lucky enough to have creative-class jobs that are satisfying, which is great as long as you're still able to carve out true, work-free leisure at some point. But there's been a kind of sneaky reframing of work as play as the Silicon Valley model has been imported into other fields. Now you see adult offices that look like nursery schools, and staff paintball parties, work cultures that encourage the "We're a family here!" fantasy while preventing workers from going home at a reasonable hour to be with their actual families.
One study found that volunteering actually makes people feel they have more time, not less. A good weekend usually involves more than just passive leisure, like spectator sports or binge-watching The Crown. What's more edifying are activities that generate meaning or purpose.
We can do a bit of blaming: the proliferation of devices means we're always at work, always on call, always available. Physically leaving the office isn't a declaration of being off work anymore; your office is in your bag or pocket.
Now we have a gig economy where many people are holding down several jobs at once. The whole concept of a 40-hour week makes people under 30 laugh.
For me, writing started as pleasure that became professionalized, so my relationship to it is a bit sullied. I'm working it out.
When we don't get that escape from our work selves, I think we feel its absence on a deep, almost primal level. Leisure is uncommodified, unoccupied time where we get to be truly free, so feeling bad about missing the weekend isn't just, "Damn, I didn't make it to the mall!" It's a profound loss.
I talked to a lot of people about what makes a good weekend, and discovered a few common threads: human connection, play, interaction with nature, exposure to beauty. It's unrealistic to think we're going to get that full 48 hours of respite, so it becomes about seeking rejuvenating beats.