The Guilt of Idleness

Wow. Last night my wife and I had nothing to do. The kids were in bed early since school is now in session, and she and I decided to take a night to do absolutely nothing. These kinds of evenings don't happen very often -- we literally schedule our lives out months in advance because we always have something going on nearly every night of every week. Most of the time, it's a case where she has to go out without me, I have to go out without her, or we schedule a date night and get a babysitter.

Well, last night, we didn't have anything going, so we decided to just sit down and watch TV for a little while. Needless to say, it was very relaxing. We enjoyed what we watched (Stargate SG-1 season 4, episode 4), then went to bed early so we could have some time to read. It was very nice to have some down time just to talk about things in an unrushed manner, and we were actually lights-out on our way to sleep by 10 p.m. (this is a very good thing for us, since we're always sleep deprived).

So why do I feel guilty? I have a list of things that need doing that can only be done after the kids go to bed, but don't I deserve a night to just relax? Under normal circumstances I'd do a combination of the following with a free evening: work on genealogy, continue archiving material my parents gave me on my family's history, do a unit or two from familysearchindexing.org, play the new computer game I got for my birthday, or create entries for this blog. There's also a few other personal projects I'm working on that I haven't made progress on in ages.

But again, why do I feel guilty for having some down time? Can't I just enjoy the time with my wife without spoiling it with some bizarre need to "accomplish" something? Our quiet moments together come rarely enough as it is. I think the problem is rooted in the fact that we are normally so busy that when we do have some down time, we don't quite know what to do with ourselves. I recognize it is good to have this time and I also appreciate that spending this time with my wife was a very good thing. So, I think I'm just going to work on letting it go, and enjoying life as it comes ... if only the guilt would subside ...