Free doesn’t mean cheap. A park bench, a good book and a long talk cost zero and hit harder than most purchases.

Price and value came apart a long time ago. A lot of the best hours available to a person cost nothing, which makes them easy to dismiss, because anything free reads as filler and anything expensive reads as an event. That is a pricing error in your head rather than a fact about the experiences themselves.

Plan one deliberately free thing this week and give it the status you would give a paid one. Put it in the calendar. Go somewhere with somebody and nothing scheduled after. Then check honestly which of your recent weekends you would actually want back.