An empty weekend isn’t a failure of planning. It might be the first rest you’ve had in a month.

An unplanned weekend can feel like evidence that nothing is happening in your life, especially when everyone else looks busy on Saturday night. Most of that reading comes from a habit of measuring days by how full they are. Emptiness is a different thing from waste, and after a long stretch of being needed it is often exactly what is due.

When the next open weekend arrives, try not to rescue it with plans made out of unease. Let a few hours go unaccounted for. Judge it afterward by how you feel on Monday rather than by what you could report.