Spending a Stupid Day

Spending a Stupid Day

All week long you’re engaged. You’re looking at email. You’re driving from here to there or you’re getting to the train and then the subway. You’re engaged in our work, your customers, your clients. You’re there for your family. You’re out picking up the dry cleaning and getting gas in the car. If you’re a business owner, when you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re still a business owner – someone has to own it overnight.

So when I picked up a friend over the weekend, she said, “I just want to spend the day being stupid.” We got in the car and headed out north. We took left and right turns, sometimes knowing where we were, and at other times not. We wound up in a country town with antique stores. Nothing even remotely worth buying except something small to add to a collection or a kitchen utensil that looked cool. No schedule to keep. Not even a movie time or a restaurant reservation. Not one minute of business talk. Deliberately not listening to the news on the radio. And we happened on a place to dine outdoors, overlooking a bocce game and a view to the west of lush green mountains.

We laughed our guts out. We talked about a zillion things. We came back as the sun was setting at around 8pm and the gorgeous moon was huge and in the distance. And we succeeded in staying stupid all day. Now how smart was that? Rejuvenated and ready to face our smart and engaged lives come Monday.