Tuesdays are the New Saturdays

The other night, Liam said something that stopped me.

“Isn’t it funny how we’re always counting down the weeks?” he said.

I laughed at first, not really sure what he meant, until he added, “If we’re lucky enough to live until 80, that means we only have about two thousand weeks left.”

Two thousand weeks.

I went quiet.

The number unsettled me, mostly because lately I have been very guilty of living for the weekend.

Especially in winter, when the grey fog crawls over London like a wet blanket and everything feels a bit muted, I catch myself drifting through the weekdays, mentally fast-forwarding to Friday. Just the other day I passed a colleague in the corridor and said, with a hopeful smile and tired eyes, “Only three more days until the weekend!”

The next morning, I googled it. If I live until 80, I have roughly 2,756 weeks left.

And yet here I am, wishing away five out of seven.

Five out of seven. Almost my whole life.

Sitting on the tube that morning, coffee in hand, I noticed things I normally miss. The pale light over the wet fields outside the window. The quiet line of horses in the paddock. The reflection of tired commuters in the glass, all of us heading somewhere we have already been hundreds of times before.

It made me realise how often I have been moving through the week on autopilot. Same commute. Same routine. Same quiet countdown to Friday.

So this year, I have decided not to set a typical New Year’s resolution. No exercise goals. No diet rules. Nothing I would quietly abandon by February. I want something simpler and harder at the same time. I want to stop living only for the weekend. I want my weekdays to count too.

You do not have to love your 9 to 5 job. I remind myself of that often. But it helps to look at it differently. Not “I live to work”, but “I work to live”. Work is what pays for the life outside it. The pilates classes. The stack of books on my windowsill. The long brunches that stretch into the afternoon. The many countries I get to visit throughout the year.

This year, I am trying one small change each week.

Walking a different route to work. Trying a new coffee shop. Cooking something I have never attempted before. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to make an ordinary Tuesday feel less automatic.

I am also trying to notice what I usually rush past. Smiling at the cashier in Tesco. Looking up from my phone while I wait for the tube. Buying the caramel latte on a random weekday instead of saving it for Saturday.

Small things, but they add up.

Having one thing to look forward to each day helps too. Dinners out with friends, a long walk, uninterrupted reading time, cooking something from a recipe. Most of life is made up of ordinary moments that are easy to miss. I do not want to keep wishing them away just because it is only Tuesday.

Weekdays are life.

Tuesdays are life.

And maybe the moment we stop waiting for Friday is the moment we start paying attention to the days we are actually living.

So here’s to the small things, and to noticing them while they are still happening.

A x