Am I busy when I am 'doing' nothing?

It’s a long weekend for us. It means that we have 3 days holiday. The extra holiday is Monday, although the term long weekend technically includes Friday as well. For the sake of people who actually plan for these holidays ahead, here in US almost all the holidays are fixed on Mondays. That is, even if Memorial Day comes in between Monday and Friday, it will be moved to either of those days, most likely to Monday, so that the fun loving citizens can have three consecutive days off. This helps a lot if you plan to enjoy this long weekend, by traveling somewhere, say, the other side of the coast. You don’t have to worry about being at your work place physically on Monday, while your mind is still set in that wonderful pub you visited on the previous night, but had to leave in a hurry coz you had to start early the next day. With Monday being a holiday, you can arrive back to your house in the afternoon and you’ll have all a whole half-day at your disposal. You can do any thing you want. You can have a sweet-tired-sleep or you can have a great Chinese dinner or you can spend the entire night wondering, of all the jobs you could have picked, why in god’s green earth did you pick the one you never liked.

This long weekend concept comes handy even if you don’t travel to the far coast. You can use this 72 hrs of do-nothing time to finish off various things that you’ve been putting off for a long time. You can clean your apartment, fix the bug problem in your kitchen, mow the lawn, or repair your cycle or your car if you have one. You can catch up on things you missed. Things like checking your account transactions for identity theft, finishing the learn-something-yourself-in-so-many-days book that you started during the previous long weekend, see if you have received all the rebates you had applied previously.

One of the most engaging activities would be to call up the credit card company and get into in a word-war with the lady on the other line. You can be pretty sure that she would never give in to your demand to reduce your APR to the lowest possible, but its fun to get into someone’s nerves, especially with a perfectly faked Chinese accent. Another refreshing activity could be to collect the money your friend owes you. This activity is a test to your HR skills as it is a test for your friend’s money management policy. The trick is to make your friend ‘want’ to give the money. By inference form historical data, the method the guarantees money but requires time. But, hello, it’s a long weekend right. If you have anything in abundance, it is time. The procedure is as follows. You go to your friend’s place, say hello or whatever the opening line is between you two, and then remind him about the money he owes you. Try not to be pushy about it. Then casually get something from the fridge, settle in a couch and watch TV. Engage with him as usual but do not let him enjoy your company and at the same time do not leave his company. The idea is to tire him out of his indignity. 4 out of 5 times this works. Now, not only have you spent your long weekend in a very satisfactory manner, but you have managed to get yourself some money too.

Of all the things that can be done during the glorious time frame of a long weekend, one thing stands as the key thing to do for a bunch of individuals. The activities include, pretty much in the same order, getting up at 11 am, eating breakfast/lunch, watching a movie, having dinner, watching a movie, going to sleep and getting up at 11 am, the cycle broken only by the occasional need to type a blog. It’s a very refreshing activity, better known as ‘being busy in doing nothing’.

God Bless the inventor of the long friggin weekend.