I took a day off the other day. What I would describe as a proper day off. It wasn’t a holiday, and I wasn’t going on holiday. It wasn’t a weekend. I simply didn’t work that day.

I had a bunch of fiddly things to get done, and some errands to run. The kinds of things that I would normally try to wedge into the cracks of a normal working day. Stolen minutes at lunchtime or on a break, going a at breakneck speed to check a couple of pesky items off the list.

What a joyful day it was. I had forgotten what it was like to enjoy your spare time. Ambling around like I had all the time in the world to get my stuff done. No more cursing my bad luck at the traffic or at other people conspiring to to delay me in my rush to get from A to B.

I’ve always been a bit precious about taking the odd day off. This is probably a throw-back to my time as an employee when I had a finite amount of holidays to take and I didn’t want to waste any on needless frippery.

But there’s something to be said for simply taking a day off to slip into the slower part of the stream for a while, to enjoy the journey, rather than the destination.