I don’t think one should ever feel guilt over a “lazy but otherwise fun” weekend. Especially if you spent the rest of the week working hard to earn your keep, you deserve time to simply rest and recreate.

That infinitude of cultural opportunities will always be there and, being infinite, there is no way one could ever hope to have the time or money to experience all of it.

The important thing is to do what you want and what you, and to hell with what other people tell you that you should be doing with your time.

A lazy day just watching TV with a boyfriend that I don’t hate and resent ever having met sounds heavenly to me!

And, though I don’t really know you in the real world, I’m always up for socializing and in-the-city adventures, if you want someone to hang with, Tinman!

Now, about the wasted time and empty weekends: I think this drive to make every moment “count” and the sense of failure that comes if we don’t live up to that goal is an artificial value imposed on our culture by the Protestant work ethic.

I can understand the prospect of looking back with regret at the end of one’s life on time wasted and opportunities missed. Yet, to all accounts that regret is going to be temporary. Either we get reincarnated and can make up for our mistakes in a next life, or we go to some kind of “heaven” or “paradise,” or we just die and that’s it: out, out brief candle, and so forth.

Actually, in that last (and probably most likely scenario) both the person who wasted his life and the one who went out and made the most of every moment and lived the most fulfilled life possible all end up in the boat.

The risk, I guess, comes in the second scenario in case God (or Whoever) judges one according to how one has spent one’s allotted time. But that also depends on picking the right religion in the first place, so it’s pretty much a crap shoot. :)