There are 24 hours in a day. Depending on your summer, you either interned for some firm every day from nine to five, worked a minimum wage job for an obscene amount of hours, or lay on the beach every minute you can catch some sunlight.
If you assume you usually sleep around seven to eight hours a night, that would leave you about eight to nine hours during the day to do as you please.
You told yourself when the summer started you would be really diligent about working out. Every day you were going to put aside an hour to head to the gym or go for a run, or even hop in someone’s pool to do a few laps. You promised yourself this during your spring break trip to Punta Cana or Europe or California or to your house where you lay on your couch all week. You promised yourself this during the year as the work cranked up and you simply didn’t have time to do anything but work. You promised yourself this during finals week when you ate a ridiculous amount of stress food and lived in a cubicle in the library. You would make it up to your body in the summer, you promised yourself all those times. You would run, you would do some abs, you would lift – and you’d look fabulous.
Of course, that was three months ago.
Here we are, the beginning of September, and you’ve realized that there are about a thousand things you would rather do than workout today.
- Watch all seven seasons of Downton Abbey. You’ve heard about the show before, but you’ve never been quite sure if it’s for you – you should probably figure it out today. Why not start the show right now and not stop until tomorrow morning?
- Take a nap. Sure, you already took one at work today during your lunch break, but do we ever get enough sleep? You’ve been pretty exhausted lately, and your couch is just so comfortable. You definitely deserve a nap right now.
- Stalk everyone you’ve ever meant on Facebook. Also on Instagram. Twitter’s going down in popularity but you should probably make sure everyone’s doing okay on there. Maybe endorse everyone on LinkedIn too. There’s that kid that sat four seats behind you in Algebra II in sophomore year of high school that you really miss, and you should just see how he’s doing.
- Read that book that’s been in the back of your closet for the past six years that you’ve never opened. You’re pretty sure that your mom’s aunt by marriage that you haven’t seen since that exact birthday party gave you this book, and it’s been sitting in the same spot ever since, but hey, reading is always a good way to spend your time.
- Clean your entire room. You have to make your bed anyway. Also you haven’t cleaned out your desk since eighth grade, so you really need to get rid of all of those old social studies tests in the bottom drawer.
- Tag your friends in weird memes on Facebook. This trend is going around for some reason, so you might as well join in and tell your best friend that she would be your partner in The Purge.
- Rewatch all of Game of Thrones. This is less of an excuse to not work out, and more just general life advice. Always watch Game of Thrones.
- Floss. You’ve been lying to your dentist your entire life about doing it; wouldn’t be nice to tell them at your next appointment that yes, you did floss that one time four months ago?
- Eat everything in your refrigerator. Honestly, if you’re not going to go to the gym, you might as well milk it for all its worth. Have some dinosaur chicken nuggets and enjoy yourself.
- Simply not get out of bed. It’s one of your less acceptable excuses, but in the end it still works.