Couch time

Today marked the beginning of a highly unusual week. In fact, I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a week such as this one.

I am not working or going to class, and I don't have any plans for the next seven days.

When I realized this today, it gave me an odd feeling. I couldn't remember the last time this happened! Of course, I remember the last time I was off work for a week: my friend and my sister were visiting, and I was showing them my new home on this side of the Atlantic. The time before that, I took time off to travel to Poland to work at an arts festival. In the last two years, there have been a few week-long research trips or visits with family. But as much as I rack my brain, I can't remember the last time I was home for a week with nothing urgent on my to-do list.

Before I moved to America, week-long periods of rest or mere inactivity seemed a lot more common. It may have had to do with the fact that I lived in the world of academia, but I live in the same kind of world here. It may also have to do with being in a doctoral program now, so perhaps what I say needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Yet when people ask me if there is anything that surprised me about life in this country, the pace of life is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Americans work a lot more and take less time off than people in Poland. While I admire the work ethic I see here, I find that it sometimes goes too far - people seem to take pride in always staying busy, never missing a day of work, or giving back paid vacation days, which creates a whole culture of overwork-ness. What gets lost along the way is time to just be, to sit back and reflect on the purpose of all that frantic activity, be silent enough to pray, to remember friends and think new thoughts.

It is perhaps a mark of my advanced acculturation that the first thing I thought of today was making a to-do list for my week off. There is laundry to be done, my heinously messy closet, shelves I got for Christmas last year still waiting to be hung, heaps of unanswered emails, a Christmas letter that is already late... I didn't make a list though. I sat on this couch for most of the day, at times immersed in a novel about nothing academic whatsoever, and at times mildly uncomfortable in the silence. Tomorrow shall worry about itself - today I had the good sense to leave the worrying to the couch.

Photo courtesy of Becca