It sounded like a dream come true: I came home from college with absolutely nothing to do. No work. No obligations. No responsibilities. I was free to do whatever I wanted, so I did. I watched nineteen episodes of Law & Order: SVU. I read Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban. I knit half a scarf. I sat on a couch for seven days straight, just how I thought I wanted it to be. I'm not going to lie, at first I loved it. I loved wrapping white yarn around two silver needles while watching Detective Rollins kick butt and change lives. I loved falling in love with Harry Potter all over again. I loved feeling like a freed Atlas.

But there was something missing.

There was something missing and I couldn't quite pinpoint it. I couldn't find it underneath the warm blankets, under the well-worn red pillows, under the nineteen-year-old couch cushions. Whatever I was missing, I couldn't find it. I got a little lost in 'next episode' clicks and page flips. I slept for ten hours a day. I ate lunch at two and dinner at five, and I really thought that I was living. After all the stress of my first year away, I thought that a little rest was what I deserved. But, my gosh, I could not have been further from right.

I traded a week of my life for a week of nothing--a week I cannot get back. 168 hours, 10,080 minutes I cannot use again. I never unpacked, I never cleaned, I never did anything to make the lives of those around me a little better, a little brighter. I just sat around, taking up space, and for a while, I enjoyed it. But then the depression hit, the boredom hit. The other shoe dropped.

There's something very inhuman about doing so little for so long, about being but not really being. We are made to move, to laugh, to love. We were made to enjoy life--to live it. This is not a bash on lazy days--lazy days are good. Lazy days are important. Lazy days make the world go 'round, but there are no lazy days if there aren't any non-lazy days. If there aren't days where you push yourself. where you work yourself, where you go out there and do something, then there are no rest days.

The world keeps moving; even when you stop, the world keeps going. When you sit on a couch for seven days, the world doesn't wait for you to get back up again. Flowers bloom and suns set with or without you. Earth stops for no one. Don't let that scare you, let it encourage you. Let it give you a reason to get up, to get moving, to live. I want you to have a week you want to keep. I want you spend thousands of minutes doing something that changes you. I want your summer to transform you. So get up. Go do something.