I have written about this topic ad nauseum, but here it comes again: Labor Day weekend is coming up next week and it is my least favorite holiday of the year. Yuck! It signals the end of the summer, the beginning of the busy fall season and worse, it’s usually not a weekend for which I make plans. But that changed a couple of years ago.
I had nothing happening for the long weekend and had no worries about it either. I thought I would just relax and hang around my place. Well, I live downtown and downtown is a ghost town on a holiday weekend like Labor Day. So, stopping into my neighborhood pizza and beer joint was just plain sad. There no one on the street. There was no one in the hallway. There was no one, period!
I could not wait for that weekend to be over and I vowed to myself that I would never spend that weekend with no plans again. And, I’ve kept my word. I didn’t have anything going on this year so I made a plan, and that’s what I want to pass on to you; if you don’t make plans for a time when you know you may be lonely, you are not doing yourself any favors.
I went from dreading the first Monday in September to now looking forward to it and here’s what it will look like for me: I am heading to visit one of my best friends in my hometown, Cincinnati. I haven’t seen her for a while and I can’t wait to have some regular time with her, without any events to bring us together. Maybe we will go to a movie, maybe some pool time, but whatever we do, it will be fun and away from ordinary life.
So what I want to tell you is that if you have a time coming up that starts to bring you down in your thinking, then make your own plan. I am not spending much money to get away, but the feelings of anticipation are so much better than the feelings of dread the week before a weekend in which the highlight is walking my dog.
Please please please, listen to this: you have the ability to change your thinking about what’s ahead by planning it for yourself. Try it and I promise you will be glad you did.
