Want to know a secret? I need you to really believe this one.

It’s okay to not do what you’re “supposed” to do some days.

It’s okay to leave the dishes in the sink.
It’s perfectly fine to not prepare the whole week’s worth of meals.
It’s utterly allowable to not fold the laundry, tidy the porch, or vacuum.
I give you full dispensation to not clean the bathroom.
You really do not have to work extra hours at the office every time you think you do.
It is not only permissible, but necessary, for you to stop being so grown-up sometimes.

Yes, the work will have to be done at some point. And it will be. That’s the thing about work. It never goes away. Even when you do it all, there’s something you haven’t done.

What you must know is that you can regularly take that time and do something better with it, like spending time with people who matter, learning or creating something new, improving your fitness or abilities, exploring a new place or an old place with new eyes, or simply relaxing and recuperating and playing.

Yes, playing.

Go and do something for fun, without measuring it or evaluating it.

There’s not a blessed thing wrong with walking out of the front door and into the sunshine to enjoy just being alive.

I think we forget this sometimes.

We forget breathing the fresh air or laughing with friends is the stuff we’ll remember as time flits by. The golden shimmer of birch leaves or the sparkle of light on water, be it sun or moon, or the glow of a loved one’s face by campfire light is the stuff that etches itself in out souls. Laundry just can’t do that. Dishes don’t stand a chance.

As time passes, faster and faster with every decade, you get more jealous of how you spend it. I think that’s why people past thirty-five stop giving as much of a crap about what other folks think of how they live; there’s a realization that time is truly the only thing that you have that you can turn into anything meaningful. Your time, every precious minute of your magnificent life is your own and if you’re going to make anything of substance with it, you need to decide a little ruthlessly what to do with it.

Some days, that’s dishes or meal prep or taking care of other mundane details, so that you have the calm and tidy place you need to tackle a week full of important adventures. Other times it’s ditching chores and spending time with real live people in the brilliant foliage of autumn because it’s a splendid thing to be alive.

Go play and live.