So anyways, I’m in the process of weaning myself back to a 4 day partition week. Of late, I’ve having more success with this, but still feel humungously guilty- and a little as if I’m skiving off. Surely, I should be spending the day writing? After all, that was always the intention- wasn’t it?
Perhaps, but last week it was Canberra, next week it will be Melbourne. Yesterday, it was a rare midweek date with hubby.
I can’t remember when hubby and I last snuck out on a work day. I guess it must have been Bank Holiday Monday about 4 years ago. Maybe 5. I can’t remember what we did- we would have needed to have done a school drop-off and pick-up (it’s a treat for Miss 17 not to catch the bus), so we wouldn’t have gone far. Perhaps, like we did yesterday, we headed for the coast, had lunch somewhere and came home.
I’d forgotten how much I love lunch dates when everyone else is working. There’s something almost sneaky about being out and about enjoying yourself when the rest of the world is in a partition doing the beavering away things that you do in a partition. More importantly, because they’re all beavering away in a partition, they’re not parked at the beach.
Where did we go?
Collaroy on the Northern Beaches.
Why?
Because it seemed like a good idea, because the sun was shining and the sky was blue, because I couldn’t remember having been over there since I was a kid, and because the name came up in a related search window box thingy when I was skimming through Broadsheet on Thursday.
What did we do?
Walked along the beach a bit, along the sea baths,watched some surfers paddle around, counted the sparkles in the water, and had lunch.
Where did we eat?
Collaroy Hotel- right on the beach.
The main restaurant upstairs was closed for a private function- a pity as the menu looked great- so we made do with the sunny Beach Bar. No great sacrifice.
I had smoked salmon and avocado with cottage cheese on rye. What arrived was slices of sourdough spread thinly with cottage cheese, a slice of smoked salmon on each, and a little bundle of avocado. Unimpressive to look at, but easy to eat one-handed with a beer.
What was impressive were the waffle fries. With lime mayo. These took the humble, chip and raised it to something completely new and artery hardening.
Afterwards?
Another quick walk to pretend to work off the waffle fries, more counting of watery sparkles, and back in time for school pick-up.
What’s your idea of a mid-week escape?
And Anyways... 
It looks lovely Jo. I cut back to 4 day weeks (or a 9 day fortnight) before I finished up full-time. I completely understand where you’re coming from as I wasn’t even supposed to be focussing on my writing at the time but I felt guilty. I mean… I didn’t have a child at home and I wasn’t studying so why did I need more time off. But it was all about my push to achieve ‘some’ work / life balance. Like you I’d look at those ‘lunching’ or going to pilates on weekdays and feel insanely jealous.
From memory I didn’t see the day I had off as the day I HAD to do certain things, as I often just got chores done and had appointments I couldn’t have on a weekend. It did however clear my weekend up a little and offer me more downtime, which was the whole point. I stopped looking at it as a standalone day off and seeing it as part of my three days at home and I could spread the normal weekend stuff over three days instead of rushing to fit it into two.
(If that makes sense!)
It makes perfect sense. This weekend I’ve managed to get the house cleaned, the ironing done, blogging for next week scheduled and some work done on the new manuscript. I couldn’t have done that in 2 days.