Today is the middle of the work week.

My husband and I just had a leisurely breakfast and spent an hour talking about random stuff.

It started out with my husband talking about work and what his co-workers were doing today.

For some reason, we moved on to discussing the differences between American homes and Japanese houses. How my parents and my sister both own homes but are thinking about moving somewhere else. And we both kind of decided we didn’t like owning a home because of the cost of maintaining it and also the lack of need for it at this time.

We also talked about possibly buying a car for me. At this point, my husband has the only car in the family because he needs it for work. I take public transportation wherever I go. He asked me if I wanted it and I said I did, but I just don’t need it. There’s no point. I also don’t want to pay for insurance and extra parking fees at our apartment. I am also perfectly happy to use my bicycle when I need to carry heavy stuff.

Then we talked about travel and my family back home, how we haven’t seen our parents since this pandemic hit.

And since my husband is a big sports fan, he talked excitedly about the upcoming soccer game he was looking forward to watching on Sunday. I could only nod and listen because I honestly have no interest in soccer. I am only glad he’s happy to watch the match.

It’s not the topics we discussed that is the main theme of this post. It’s the feeling of relaxation we had when we were eating breakfast slowly and the time we spent sitting on the couch after, discussing random things.

That to me was the thing that stood out the most.

This was during the middle of the work week. I worked yesterday but still have to go in and teach tomorrow. Today was a random day he took off from his regular job. Normally, he would be working, too.

Having the time to be leisurely and relaxed while everyone else was working.

It felt really nice.

And it struck me that this is what I was aiming for whenever I said I want financial independence. We get to take our time in the morning and not have to rush to get to work. We got to eat and digest our food. We talked about important things–things that will matter to us in the long run. And also non-important things that still made us happy.

I loved being able to ignore the clock in the morning. I didn’t need to look at it and think about the train that I have to catch. I didn’t need to pack a bento for the both of us for lunch to eat at work. I didn’t need to look in the closet to find the clothes I needed for the day.

Everything was chill. There was no rush, no urgency, only the feeling of peace and calm.

I know we have the weekend to do all this, but I love the fact that this was on a weekday.

I want to do this everyday.

It’s going to be a rarity, but at least I got a taste of what I want in the future. Today just reaffirms exactly why I need to work hard to achieve our goals. It’s good motivation to keep me saving as much as I can to buy the freedom and the lifestyle that I envision for our future.