When I was in the depths of revising for my university finals, I kept a list of all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t because I had to work instead. Said list is long since lost, but it probably went something like this: take a walk around Hyde Park (Leeds, not London) and the eerily peaceful adjoining cemetery, St George’s Field; go to the indie night at the O2 Academy, the only club I ever truly willingly attended; spend an afternoon among the must and the magic of the medieval manuscripts held in the Brotherton Library’s Special Collections. But once I’d finished my exams, I didn’t want to do anything on my list. It was only the fact that I had not been free to do these things that made them in any way alluring.
I wrote another such list in the run-up to the break I took last week, not to go away, but to stay home, enjoy mooching around London and do all the things I get little time to do when I’m working. I have done so every November for the past four years, yet somehow always manage to forget that I end up spending much of my time off in an anxious spiral that I am not doing it right. This time, the spiral was more perilous still because it turned out M— was on tour for most of the week, so it was rather lonelier than I’d anticipated. And because it was the first time I’ve had any length of distraction-free time since Dad died. After a few days, I was coming round to the belief that there’s a reason we work; perhaps it might actually be good for us.
Last November, I overplanned and spent the week dashing about much as I would during the working week, only while spending more money: not restful enough. This, in turn, was a reaction against the previous year, when I had made no plans at all, and spent the week having a minor breakdown. The idea this time around was: don’t make too many plans, keep it flexible, but have ideas to choose from if you find yourself feeling like a lonely loser.
Of course, when it came down to it, I did not want to do many of the things on my list this time round either – nice as it might have sounded, compared to being bound to my work laptop, to run 15km to London’s best ice cream parlour (Gelupo on Archer Street, since you asked), or to visit Walthamstow’s new plunge pool and sauna complex, or to see the new Marie Antoinette exhibition at the V&A. Instead, what I wanted to do was lie on the sofa and complete another rewatch of Friends. (I find it satisfying that every time I embark on this feat, I find a new joke or reference that I now understand, having learned the crucial piece of information in the intervening years: this time, what a 401k is.) Fear not, I had begun this project some weeks earlier; I love TV, but even I would not watch 88 hours of it in a week.
I sometimes struggle to discern the difference between much-needed rest – good – and lazy, screen-induced rot – bad – and the subtle shift when the former becomes the latter. To prevent myself entirely becoming one with the sofa, I took instead to carting my laptop around the house, so I could half-watch while doing other things: sewing myself a navy mac; working on a hand-embroidered advent calendar; cooking a vat of paneer curry for a raucous all-in (partners and children) get-together with my schoolfriends.
More often than not these days, I find myself rewatching old favourites rather than searching out new entertainment. I fear this habit is not making me any smarter, but it is comforting, and avoids wasting time on newer Netflix slop. I was recently discussing the joy of the rewatch with a colleague, who told me that when she was ill earlier this year – too ill to look at a screen – she listened to Sex and the City, a show she knows so well she needn’t even watch to follow.
One victory, at least, of my week off – I avoided the sickness that almost always comes when I take a few days’ rest. Instead, it arrived shortly after my return to work. And so, I write this from my sick bed – perhaps suffering some kind of sympathy pains for my fellow columnist across the page, or maybe just the flu. Now, shall I listen to Gilmore Girls or Parks and Rec?
[Further reading: I’ll say it: I’m a boyfriend, and proud]
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This article appears in the 20 Nov 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Meet the bond vigilantes