Imagine a Tuesday morning without a phone to answer, without multitudes of work piled on your desk. Instead, you sit in your assigned seat in between a friend and stranger listening to the pilot announce it’s time to cut off all devices.

It’s lunchtime on Thursday and instead of checking your watch every seven minutes making sure you don’t go over your allotted thirty-minute break, you’re eating yourself sick with a friend competing in a local restaurant’s food eating contest. Eyes on the prize determined to win that tacky t-shirt and have your face on the wall of fame.

Imagine a Monday night stretched out on blanket feet entwined with your daughter’s, both of you tracing the stars in your backyard imaging faraway places where dragons still exist and knights sometimes wear dirty armor.

I can admit to feeling an overwhelming tug of resentment. Resentment may be the wrong word here, it’s an overwhelming feeling of sadness that I’m not able to book a flight on a Tuesday morning without having to use paid time off.

For most of us, weekdays are the passing of time until we get to the weekend. How many of us get through the week by thinking of the things we can’t wait to do when our work week is over?

Unless you’re retired weekdays aren’t something you look forward to. No, we look forward to the days we can be free. Free of our jobs, our responsibilities, and the things that bear down on us throughout the week.

My job provides stability, I don’t have to wonder where my next paycheck will come from. It’s in my account every other Wednesday as long as I’m in my seat at that job every workday. But I want more than the classic job. Regardless of how good I am at my job and how great I make clients feel. There is a part of me that needs to be set free from working a classic nine to five. I am not advocating for people to quit their jobs and start booking flights. Instead, I’m encouraging people to think about the thing they really want to do, the thing that makes them excited to wake up in the morning.

For me it’s flying on a Tuesday, or rather, having the freedom to fly on a Tuesday.

There’s this feeling that comes with possibilities. It’s stirring in your chest, it’s a happy rumble-like an internal purr that is dying to escape and when it does, it’s a smile. It sounds silly, and hell, maybe it is, but it’s a feeling I haven’t felt in so long.

I miss the days I could wake up and take a random trip to the beach whenever the mood struck me. When I was seventeen, my best friend, and I drove to Myrtle Beach to fight boredom. Endless top forty songs and three and a half hours later, we accomplished our mission. We had no hotel room and a few dollars between us and had the time of our lives on the pavilion.

In truth, it isn’t the work week or classic jobs that make me sad. It’s the freedom of youth that sometimes when I wasn’t looking, passed me by. But I’m a romantic at heart, I refuse to live this too short life without clutching on to the shirttails of Hope’s faded t-shirt.