Last weekend, on a Saturday (the first of February, 2025, for anyone reading this disconnected from when I’m posting it), I woke up after barely five hours of sleep to the calming tones of my alarm and hauled myself out of bed so I could go to work. I had to work for at least a few hours that day, thanks to someone else’s fuckup (or, to hear them tell it, me not being able to properly anticipate that they would take my testing equipment without a word to me), so I hauled my way through my morning routine as I did something I hadn’t done in about fifteen years. It was difficult and I did not enjoy needing to cut myself short on sleep in order to go into the office to do work that I’d have had ample time to do if someone else hadn’t messed up my week so horribly. As I went through the motions, prepared my coffee, and made myself ready to stop at the pharmacy on my way in, I had the strangest feeling that something was missing from my morning. I eventually figured it out as I got into my car to drive away, since the feeling eventually grew into the faintest echoes of a song I would know anywhere from its opening notes alone. It was a bit of music that had once featured prominently in some of my more recent playlists as a calming instrumental piece but that I’d recently moved away from, as I shifted into new playlists that better matched how I’ve felt this past year and am feeling today, which made it easy enough to reclaim. It was the National Park theme from Pokémon: SoulSilver (or just Silver).

You see, as a child, Saturdays were chore days in my parents’ household. We were allowed to get up a bit later (I never did), but we’d always have to set aside whatever we were doing to attend to our weekly chores starting at nine in the morning. Things like cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, laundry, scrubbing the kitchen, weeding gardens, whatever. Every Saturday, as long back as I can remember until sometime in my high school years, I got up and worked on Saturdays. My only experiences with Saturday morning cartoons where from the brief period before we had to work and the occasional day I’d get done quickly and not be given more chores as a punishment for working swiftly, leaving me time enough to catch the last show or two. In high school, as the time we could do these chores changed to reflect my mother’s shift from home schooling us all to home schooling none of us, we were allowed to do our weekend chores on our own time, but I still did them quickly most of the time so I could indulge in one of my favorite little Saturday traditions at the time: the bug-catching contest in the national park of Pokémon’s SoulSilver and, originally, Silver. I’d always loved Silver version. Having a direct, scumbag rival who was actually a bad guy that you’re powerless to really stop and are forced to eventually sort of make good with, was the first time I got to explore the catharsis of project my brother onto a character like that. It was also the first Pokémon game I played where I started out knowing how Pokémon works and the first game that understood the passage of real time, which was such a cool idea to me. Plus, it had that radio that let you control the music, you could call people or get calls from people, and it included this whole new world AND the old world I was already familiar with. It might STILL be my favorite Pokémon game, albeit in SoulSilver form nowadays.

The Bug Catching Contest was one of my favorite parts of the game. The first time I played through it, there were countless baseless rumors about what you might win if you did well enough. I was fascinated with seeing what rare creatures might show up there and what cool prizes I could win as I poured countless hours into that game. As an older kid and teen, it was just a fun ritual. Some pleasant music and a way to make a little extra money in-game as I continuously replayed it (since playing Pokémon was what I did most nights when I couldn’t sleep). It was a treasure that I eventually grew to associate with early, busy Saturday mornings, dawn light, and the slow, mounting dread of something you know you need to do but nevertheless wish you could avoid as you slowly put yourself through the steps required to begin that work. All of which is a sensation I’ve deliberately avoided since I left my parents’ house for college. I’ve worked Saturdays since then, mostly in college and sometimes right after college, but I promised myself that I wouldn’t make myself work like my parents did. I’ve relented on that somewhat over the years, using Saturdays to do some cleaning as I need to and almost always doing my laundry on a Saturday, but I’ve never also forced myself out of bed or made myself do chores when I really didn’t want to (most of the time, I’ve wanted to do my household cleaning chores as an adult).

It took fifteen years and a half years, but it finally happened again. I finally had to force myself to do something. It was an admittedly small thing in the grand scale of modern life, but it was still something that I’d promised myself I’d never do. I don’t know that this was the last promise I still had from when I swore things to myself as a teen thinking about leaving my parents behind, but it felt like it, even if it took this recent Saturday morning of accidentally falling into childhood habits to remind me of it. More pressingly, though, it represents the final faltering of the last barrier I had between work and my life. Weekends were the last thing I held sacrosanct from my job. And now that’s over. It’s too late. Sure, I might never work another weekend, but it’s going to be so much easier to convince myself to work on another weekend now that I’ve done it. I mean, I’m already thinking about doing it this weekend, if I don’t get enough done, or next weekend if I can’t finish all of my documentation in time for my deadline. Practical thoughts, sure. Thoughts that would make me a lot of money, absolutely, thanks to getting overtime pay. But also thoughts I wouldn’t have even dreamed of two weeks ago, before I broke this final boundary.

It shouldn’t be that big of a deal. Yeah, it came at the end of a really long week and a few frustrating days, but I managed to get everything done that I wanted to and didn’t even miss out on much. I hope I don’t have to do that again. I hope I can work to avoid it in the future, even though I know I couldn’t have anything to prevent this recent day of weekend work since I didn’t anticipate my coworker being so shitty. Still, even if I never work another weekend in my life, I can’t get over this small but linger sense of loss. A silly one, maybe, but one that still marks an end I can’t help but keep thinking about. A private grief, to be sure, but what is most grief if not private?