I'm learning to not feel guilty about my guilty pleasures. I'm still in the initial phases of this, but I'm getting there.
So, what are some of my guilty pleasures? Most of my joys revolve around simply spending time for myself to do things I want to do. For instance, as I'm writing my blog entry, I'm watching 80's videos on VH1 Classic. It's Sunday and therefore I will also get to comb through the newspapers and collect my coupons, circulars, and new articles of interest. Mr. Bourne is at work and this is MY time. Sometimes, I'll go back to sleep for a while. For the longest time, I felt guilty about these routines. I thought I should be doing something more useful like housework. What I soon came to realize is that I need these little pockets of "wasted" times in my days. They are the times that recharge my batteries and help me make it through the remainder of the day. Most of my days are full of neccesary things to do from the moment I get up until late evening. In recent months I'm starting to change the way I tackle my days. I fit in little guilty pleasures. When I get ready for work, I enjoy giving myself a mini pedicure. It only takes a few minutes each morning, but something about it makes me happy. On my way to work I give Mr. Bourne a call to make sure he got to work safely, to sing to him from whatever is on the radio (yes...I sing snippets of songs to Mr. Bourne as soon as he answers the phone each morning), and to just hear his voice. When I get to work I make a mug of unsweetened green tea. My day seems "off" if I don't have my green tea each day. It comforts me. Periodically during the work day I have certain people I like to email or chat with. After work, I like watching The Waltons while I fix dinner. After dinner, I sometimes take a nap, read, watch TV, or have Mr. Bourne play DJ and play music while we just play on our computers for a while. At night I have started enjoying watching Frazier before I got to bed. All total these little patches of daily guilty pleasures might add up to no more than three hours, but they really do get me through the day and help me achieve my daily goals.
The one guilty pleasure I truly do feel guilty about is the use of some of my weekends. Every few weekends, I have marathon sleeping sessions. I will literally sleep all day on some Saturdays. I often feel guilty about this because I know Mr. Bourne would rather us be out doing something. I will feel terrible about letting entire Saturdays slip away because I was sleeping. This is something I'm working on. I need to understand that those extended periods of sleep are going to make me a better person during the following week. Maybe I shouldn't view those weekends as a guilty pleasure but more as a neccesity. Maybe that's how I should view all of those things I call guilty pleasures. They are neccesary for me to be who I am and to get everything done. And, perhaps, they are not "wasted" activities at all but truly my own personal neccesities.
