I believe in ambition. I believe in work. I believe in having goals, staying curious, making plans and occasionally behaving like a responsible adult. I also believe one day a week should be allowed to accomplish absolutely nothing. My perfect Sunday has no measurable outcome. Nothing is optimized. Nobody is “crushing it.” There are no deliverables. If I accidentally achieve something, I try not to let it ruin the mood. It begins late. This is essential. Early Sunday mornings are undoubtedly lovely, according to reliable sources. I rarely encounter them. I prefer that wonderful half-conscious period when you wake up, realize there is nowhere urgent to be, and go back to sleep purely because you can. This may be one of adulthood’s finest luxuries. Eventually sunlight becomes persuasive. The dog has filed several formal complaints. Coffee is required. Now we negotiate breakfast. Sunday breakfast should either be extremely simple or completely excessive. There is no respectable middle. Coffee and toast while still half asleep? Lovely. Or eggs, fruit, pastries, potatoes, juice, coffee, perhaps something sparkling, and enough food to suggest we are provisioning an expedition? Also lovely. Brunch is one of those concepts people enjoy mocking because it became popular. I refuse. I like brunch. There. Cancel me. Any institution built around eating eggs at noon while drinking champagne has my full ideological support. <\/p>\n
The trick is not turning it into combat. I don’t want to stand in line for forty-five minutes outside a restaurant while everybody consults ratings on their phones. This violates the Sunday constitution. Give me somewhere comfortable. A table outside if the weather is beautiful. A booth if it isn’t. Good coffee. No hurry. The entire point is temporal irresponsibility. Afterward, we walk. Not “get our steps.” Walk. There is a difference. Getting steps sounds like my body has issued a performance improvement plan. Walking means we go outside and see what happens. Maybe through a neighborhood. Maybe along the water. Maybe nowhere in particular. Dogs understand this distinction perfectly. To them a walk is not cardiovascular exercise. It is journalism. Every tree contains breaking news. Every lamppost has received overnight correspondence. No dog has ever looked at a watch and said, “Let’s pick up the pace.” Excellent Sunday philosophy. <\/p>\n
If I’m with a man I like, this is one of my favorite kinds of intimacy. No impressive restaurant. No dress. No performance. Just walking beside someone. You learn different things about people during unstructured time. Dates have an architecture. You arrive. You order. You talk. The environment keeps moving things forward. A lazy day doesn’t. You have to be able to exist together without entertainment constantly being provided. Can we wander into a bookstore? Can we sit in a park? Can we spend twenty minutes debating whether an extremely ugly dog is actually so ugly that he has become beautiful? Can we go home and do separate things in the same room? That last one may be one of the most underrated forms of intimacy. I read. You do whatever mysterious thing men do on laptops. The dog sleeps between us. Nobody speaks for a while. Silence with the right person is profoundly comfortable. Silence with the wrong person is an hostage situation. Choose carefully. Eventually someone becomes hungry again. This is Sunday. Eating is basically the plot. Perhaps we cook. I like the idea of cooking more than I consistently like the logistics of cooking, but with another person it can be fun. Music on. Wine open. One person actually understands the recipe. The other provides emotional support and steals ingredients. There should be no complicated culinary ambition unless cooking is genuinely your pleasure. <\/p>\n
Sunday dinner is not the moment to discover that the sauce requires reduction, three specialty shops and a degree in chemistry. Pasta. Roast chicken. Something on a grill. A salad to establish moral credibility. Good bread. Done. Or we order takeout. Also civilization. The important thing is that dinner happens without shoes. I spend enough of my life liking beautiful shoes. Sunday is when my feet unionize. Then perhaps a movie. Choosing the movie will take longer than watching it. Modern streaming has somehow given us access to nearly every piece of entertainment ever created while making it impossible to select one. We scroll. “No.” “Seen it.” “Too depressing.” “What’s that?” “Bad reviews.” “Who cares?” Twenty-seven minutes later we watch something one of us has already seen. Perfect. At some point, Sunday gets melancholy. Do other people feel this? The light changes. Evening arrives. Monday begins appearing faintly on the horizon like a ship you did not invite. <\/p>\n
The weekend suddenly feels finite. I used to resist that feeling. Now I almost like it. A little melancholy adds flavor. Things are precious partly because they end. Vacation. Summer. Youth. Dinner. A perfect lazy day. If Sunday lasted forever, we’d eventually need Tuesday just to make it interesting. So we accept the evening. Maybe baths. Maybe clean sheets. Maybe a phone call to family. Maybe another walk because the dog remains committed to local journalism. Then bed earlier than seems glamorous. Although bed with someone you desire can retain a certain amount of glamour regardless of the hour. Sunday romance is different from Saturday-night romance. Saturday wears perfume. Sunday has bare feet. Saturday orders martinis. Sunday steals your T-shirt. Saturday wants to impress you. Sunday already knows where you keep the coffee. I think I may prefer Sunday. Not every time. Let’s remain civilized. But there is something intimate about being allowed into someone’s ordinary life. The grand evenings matter. So do the quiet mornings after them. Perhaps real luxury is having enough space in your life that a whole day can pass without needing to justify itself. You ate. You walked. You laughed. You rested. You touched someone you love. You watched the sun move across the room. Nothing was accomplished. Everything happened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I believe in ambition. I believe in work. I believe in having goals, staying curious, making plans and occasionally behaving like a responsible adult. I also believe one day a week should be allowed to accomplish absolutely nothing. My perfect Sunday has no measurable outcome. Nothing is optimized. Nobody is “crushing it.” There are no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n