After the Long Weekend
Friday didn’t exactly start the weekend off the way I imagined. My paycheck never showed up in my account, and after way too many refreshes I had to leave work early to figure it out. Turns out the check was mailed. Not direct deposited. Mailed. Which meant I had to trek over to payroll, sit through the whole explanation, and then fix my direct deposit information right there on the spot because never again. My district switched to a whole new payroll system and somehow my direct deposit information got lost along the way. To top it off, my check STILL hasn’t cleared so I techinically still haven’t been paid yet. It’s 2025, this sort of stuff should NOT be happening.
Once that mess was sort of behind me, I decided to let the weekend be slow. The kind of slow that feels like hitting pause. I slept in, lounged around, and let myself just exist without needing to check things off a list. I spent time with my partner and my son, which was exactly the grounding I needed after the chaos of the week. Somewhere in there I prepped a few lunches for the week, and I squeezed fresh orange juice—something about it made me feel like I was taking better care of myself than usual.
Nothing big or flashy happened, but maybe that’s the point. After weeks of being “on,” it felt good to just be. That quiet space, without the pressure to perform or produce, is usually when the sparks show up—the zine ideas, the journal pages, the scribbles that eventually turn into something more. Sometimes the reset is the work.