The Pleasure of a Day That Doesn’t Need to Become Anything

I remember the first time I went to a movie by myself.

I felt awkward walking into the theater alone, as though my arrival announced something I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted announced.

Look. That woman doesn’t have anyone to go to the movies with.

I bought my ticket, got my popcorn and found my seat with the distinct feeling that people were looking at me, perhaps wondering who the loser was sitting there by herself. They probably weren’t. As it turns out, other people are disappointingly preoccupied with their own lives.

But try telling that to a self-conscious woman sitting alone in a movie theater for the first time.

Then the lights went down, the movie started, and I forgot all about it.

Presumably, so did everyone else.

I’ve never given it another thought since. In fact, I got remarkably good at going to the movies alone.

One movie was really more of a suggestion

There were stretches of my life when a cold winter weekend or a rainy Saturday could easily turn into a movie day.

I’d go to a matinee, buy an unreasonable amount of popcorn and settle in. Sometimes I watched one movie. Sometimes two. Occasionally I’d walk back into the lobby afterward and check the board to see what was starting next.

The real question wasn’t whether I should see another movie. It was whether there was still another movie playing that I was willing to watch.

Important distinction.

Eventually, I’d leave the theater and head to the bookstore.

I could live in a bookstore

I could spend hours there.

I’d wander through fiction, psychology, spirituality, cookbooks and home, usually with no particular book in mind. I’d get a hot chocolate from the café, gather whatever had caught my attention and build a small fortification of books around one of the comfortable chairs.

There was no list. No destination.

Some books survived closer inspection. Others did not.

Sometimes I’d put one back, wander another aisle, then circle around and retrieve it again. Apparently, a brief separation was enough to clarify my feelings.

There was nowhere else I needed to be.

That was the part I loved most, although I don’t think I understood it then.

The slow, lazy draw of those days.

I didn’t feel guilty about them.

My time belonged to me.

I didn’t think of it as self-care

I wasn’t going to the movies because I’d read that leisure was important for my mental health. I wasn’t sitting in the bookstore because solitude was regulating my nervous system. I wasn’t practicing intentional anything.

I was having a good time. That’s it.

There was no wellness vocabulary wrapped around the day. No optimization. No habit tracker. No justification.

I wasn’t rewarding myself for having been productive enough. I wasn’t “recharging” so I could come back more effective on Monday. I wasn’t investing in myself.

I was eating popcorn and watching movies.

We’ve become remarkably talented at requiring pleasure to submit a business case.

Reading is good because it improves cognition. Walking is good because it counts toward our steps. Gardening reduces stress. Hobbies make us more creative. Rest makes us more productive.

Apparently enjoying yourself because you enjoy yourself is insufficient documentation.

I’m beginning to think pleasure needs better legal representation.

Relationships change the architecture of our lives

There wasn’t a final movie day.

I didn’t sit in a bookstore one afternoon, finish my hot chocolate and somehow know that this particular version of my life was ending.

George and I got together, and the rhythm of my life changed.

Those days didn’t disappear because he asked me to stop having them. They didn’t disappear because I decided they were childish or selfish or something I had outgrown.

They simply stopped fitting the same way.

That’s one of the quieter things that happens when we build a life with someone.

“What am I doing today?” slowly becomes “What are we doing today?”

Not always. Not completely. But enough that the architecture changes.

You add rooms to your life and sometimes don’t notice that there are old ones you no longer use very often.

Remembering isn’t the same as wanting to go back

I don’t wish I still lived alone.

That’s important.

Remembering those days fondly isn’t a secret argument for returning to them.

I can love the life I have and still remember the particular pleasure of sitting in a dark theater with an absurd amount of popcorn, walking into the lobby afterward and checking the board to see what else was playing.

I can remember the bookstore café. The hot chocolate. The books piled around me.

I can remember how unhurried I felt.

And I can remember the woman who could let an entire day unfold without asking whether she should be doing something more useful with it.

Neither life is better.

They’re different architectures.

There was no “me time”

When I lived alone, I didn’t call those days “me time.”

All of my time was technically me time.

I didn’t have to claim it, negotiate for it, schedule it or announce that I needed it.

Nobody had taken the day from me, so there was nobody I needed to take it back from.

That kind of time is different from an empty square on a calendar.

It is undefended time—time that doesn’t need an explanation.

We seem determined to make pleasure useful

A hobby becomes a creative practice.

A walk becomes exercise.

A nap becomes recovery.

Reading becomes personal development.

A quiet afternoon becomes nervous-system regulation.

And if we’re not careful, even doing nothing gets assigned deliverables.

Rest so you’ll be more productive.

Take a break so you can come back stronger.

Recharge.

Reset.

Return improved.

Jesus.

What if I just want popcorn?

Not every enjoyable hour has to improve the person having it.

Sometimes a good day can just be a good day.

I wonder when time became something we had to earn

Somewhere along the way, adulthood seems to have acquired a strange relationship with time.

There is an implied legitimacy to time used well.

You should probably exercise.

You should probably clean something.

You should probably answer that email.

You should probably get ahead on the week.

You should probably—

There’s always a probably.

I don’t remember carrying any of that into those movie theaters.

I didn’t need to explain why I was there.

I didn’t need to promise myself I’d make up for it later.

I didn’t need to earn the next movie by accomplishing something between films.

The increasingly radical thing may simply be letting a day belong to itself.

Maybe the old rooms are worth visiting

Our lives change shape.

They should.

I don’t think the goal is to preserve every version of ourselves indefinitely.

God, imagine the storage requirements.

Nor do I think we need to inventory every hobby we’ve abandoned and immediately schedule it back into our calendars. That sounds suspiciously like another assignment.

But maybe there is something worth noticing about the things that delighted us before we learned to explain why they were good for us.

Not necessarily so we can recreate them.

Just so we can remember.

I had forgotten how much I loved those days until I started talking about them.

Then I found myself smiling.

The lights went down

The first time I walked into a movie theater alone, I thought everyone noticed.

Then the lights went down.

Nobody cared.

Eventually, neither did I.

I became the woman who could watch one movie, walk into the lobby, check the board and decide that perhaps two movies would be better.

Sometimes three.

Then I’d go to the bookstore, order a hot chocolate and surround myself with books.

There was no guilt attached to any of it.

No agenda.

No requirement that the day become something more than it was.

I don’t know whether I need to start doing that again.

Maybe I will.

Maybe I won’t.

But I like remembering that I once knew how.

Because for a while, on cold winter afternoons and rainy weekends, I was extraordinarily good at letting a day belong to me.

And apparently, sometimes one movie really wasn’t enough.