How Leaning into Solitude and Softness Isn’t Selfish, It’s Necessary

Radical Pleasure columnist Athena Dixon on the pleasure of quiet Sundays to reset herself for the week ahead

Sundays are quiet. They are slow and solitary and in these late days of spring, right before the world tips over into summer, they are full of sunlight and open windows. Most of these days my home smells of incense and bleach and I strip down my bed and replace the sheets and pillowcases and burrow into the smell of lavender in the new ones. Some of those days I order groceries and eat thick sandwiches on soft bread stacked high with roasted chicken and extra sharp cheddar. I play jazz albums and binge read books about seemingly impossible love. On Sundays I reset for the week ahead.

These now-routine days have been carefully curated to be as stress free as possible. I’ve curated them because I know the way impending Mondays drop the bottom out of my stomach. I start most weeks nervous and wound so tightly my shoulders and neck ache. I know that most weeks will slide by in a blur of casework and voicemails and emails and meetings and a full calendar. Sundays are for me—isolated and out of touch to most of the world at large. I’m lazy as the weekend comes to a close. I’ve finally let myself be okay with that.

For so very long I expected constant production and accomplishment from myself. If I wasn’t always doing something then that meant I was wasting time and wasted time meant I was stuck in the same place. And if I fear anything? I fear being lapped, being unprepared, and being caught off guard. I like to appear competent and in control. I take pride in being able to troubleshoot, provide for, and indulge the people in my life even if they haven’t asked for it or are expecting it. And so I get into these cycles of giving and doing until I’m tapped out.

The Sunday reset didn’t start as a way to ease into better care of myself, though. It started off as a purely practical act. I needed to make sure I wasn’t sleeping in dirty sheets and that I had enough clean clothes to wear. I needed to make sure there were no dishes piled in the sink and that I’d cleaned the bathroom. All pragmatic things that made me feel at least a little bit better about the way household responsibilities would give way to stress as the week wore on. But that practical prep didn’t leave time for me. All it did was shift stress and give energy to it. I wasn’t doing much of anything to be soft with myself. Monday through Friday were for the office. If I was lucky, a random Friday night might have meant dinner or drinks with friends. Saturdays were always for writing, errands, or to-do lists. Sundays were always prep to start the cycle all over again. Where did that leave me? Responsible, organized, and very, very exhausted.

The shift to the Sunday reset, and the personal pampering that it eventually morphed into, doesn’t have a particular starting point in my memory. Before I realized what I was doing, I was integrating small changes into the day. When I opened my eyes, I stopped muscle memory from making me reach for my phone and instead started listening to the environment around me before I moved. Birds, the whoosh of my nightstand fans, my skin across the cotton sheets, the rain sounds from the white noise machine. I trained myself to stretch my body like a cat, all long and loose, before I put my feet to the floor.

I told myself it was okay to spend the entire day in bed if I wanted to and started bringing my laptop and phone and books and laying among them for hours on end as I moved between activities. I started to take long baths and lounging so long I wrinkled. Some Sundays I’d find myself with my knees in the sofa, arms crossed on the windowsill, staring out into my neighborhood in silence. Bit by bit I slowed myself down and sat with my body, mind, and heart so I could pay attention to what each of them required to come back to a solid foundation.

I’m writing this on a Sunday. My skin is soft from my shower and my fresh sheets are smooth beneath me. The fan next to me is a soft roar mixing with the sound of rain and cars outside the open windows of my bedroom. I’m going to finish a few more sentences and then walk barefoot across the hardwood floors of my home and get some ice cream from the freezer. And when I’m done I’m going to come back to the page and contemplate some more because Sundays are balanced just as much as they are mine now. Sometimes work and writing creep into them because my spirit wants to expend the energy on just that. So, I do. I do what I am called to without guilt.

As my Sundays slowed down, my idea of what I needed to feel comfortable and relaxed ramped up. Slowing down meant I could linger a bit longer on living in the moment, not preparing for the next item on my agenda or worrying that I was dropping the ball in some way. My loved ones have told me for as long as I can remember that I don’t live in the now. They’ve told me I’m always barreling toward the next thing instead of sitting with what I’ve just done or in the silence of not doing anything. They’ve warned me time and again about burning the candle on both ends and how eventually I wouldn’t have a choice but to slow down because my body would do it for me.

Slowing down taught me to say no and set boundaries that I’d struggled with before. I allowed myself permission to not always be on, to not always be accessible, even to that part of myself so wrapped up in production and accomplishments. Slowing down didn’t mean I was rude or that I was annoyed. Taking these hours for myself didn’t point to a flaw in my character or indicate selfishness. It just meant I wanted to sit in the company of myself. And after so many years of that production and accomplishment cycle and of being all things to all people except myself, I had not only earned that option, I deserved it.

Sundays look far less scary now. There are still nerves. I still fret a bit as the hours move and dusk comes on. I keep working through my lingering fears and doubts, though. I still glance every time my phone lights up with a notification and I make a quick decision if I want to reply or wait until I’m done enjoying my disconnect. I still open and un-open emails because I’m worried about whether I’m taking too long to get back to someone and I’m holding up some vital task they need to complete. And I still gauge if I have the wherewithal to do much more than lounge and laze. But I resist.

I resist by leaning into the silence and the softness of these new Sundays because I need the edges of my life to round and to stop bruising myself by trying to do too much in too short of a time. And that fear is tempered now—by softness and ease and purpose. The Sunday considerations spill over into the rest of the week, too. If it’s a Tuesday and my body and mind call for me to be still, I’m still. The work and expectations of my life are always there. There is always a to-do list or a notification to manage. Me taking this day to be gentle with my spirit will not stop the world.

Busyness is like air in my life—all around and able to suffocate me if I don’t pay careful enough attention. I’ve made the hours of Sunday freedom. Even if there is still routine, that routine is a loose idea. I follow my base instincts on those days. Eat, sleep, relax. There are no solid boundaries except I come first and there is no shame in that. If I can honor these simple ideas then my Sundays will continue to be my soft place to land amid the chaos of what I willingly and unwillingly carry on my shoulders. They will continue to be the soft wind of my fan and smooth cotton against my skin.

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.