Leaving the US

Sundays Without a To-Do List

Letting go of the American urge to always be doing, and learning the value of time that asks nothing from you.

Keith Christiansen

14 Aug 2025 — 5 min read

In New York, Sundays were dressed for rest but wired for work.

In New York, Sundays were a bit of a deception. They were comparatively quiet, but still nothing like the quiet of France.

My Sundays in NYC felt like the first day of the work week. As teachers, and there was always something to plan, prep, submit, or “reflect” on.

It’s really different now that we’re in France.

a different life

It’s hard to know where to start the list. I no longer have thirty students walking into my classroom at 8:06 a.m., whether I am ready for them or not.

If not, you’ll find out exactly how long forty-three minutes can feel with a room full of unfocused kids. They can smell a lack of preparation like blood in the water.

So there’s that.

But we have changed virtually every part of our lives. It all sounds obvious once you list it.

Language, routines, diets, social lives, even who we speak to.

I loved our old neighbors and used to speak to them every day. I haven’t spoken to them in over a year, and maybe a year before that, the occasional text.

But they don’t feel that distant - which counts for a little something. People have busy lives.

We’re no longer in a big city.

We’ve gone from the speed and density of New York to the slower rhythm of Nantes, which isn’t small but feels it, and then from Nantes to out in the country a bit.

France gets rural very just outside of the cities.

In France, Sundays stop.

This has taken some serious getting used to.

Shops close. Streets quiet. The whole day feels like it’s been gently taken off the calendar and set aside.

And slowly, the constant checklist in my head is fading. It’s taken years.

The change is almost physical. In New York, a slow day there wasn’t truly slow; it was just a gap between faster things.

Here, Sunday feels like a veery different day. The pace doesn’t slow—it settles, at least for us. Someone must be running around, but Sunday can also feel like a miniature August - and August is like a stasis.

You hear birds more than traffic. Even time feels heavier, like it’s not in a rush to pass.

August house at a cafe near us -updated on the web, a rarity.

At first, it was disorienting. I’d catch myself trying to do things, errands. We didn’t own a house suddenly, we were apartment dwellers. a lot less maintenance.

Now, I’ve started to let the stillness in, and it’s a different kind of productivity.

Not bullet points or inbox zero, but room to think, notice, slow down.

I had to learn how to slow down.

And how to be cool with it.

A lot has changed

The rhythm rewired itself. I didn’t notice it at first, but somewhere between the boulangerie runs and the long, uneventful afternoons, I stopped bracing for the week before it even began.

In New York, Sunday wasn’t a weekend - the week never really ended.

The stillness of France would seem apocalyptic in New York.

Sunday was technically a day off, but really just a soft launch. I’d try to reset, yet always ended up hunched over my laptop, tweaking slides and notes I’d already revised to death.

We’ve changed our whole lives here. Not just our location, our routines,

It was partly the job, also partly the people I worked for. Some jobs make people behave certain ways.

My last principal was maddening.

Monday mornings carried a kind of semi-militant enthusiasm — more teeth than smiles — the kind that treats smiling as a management tactic rather than a sign of genuine joy.

But her Mondays also began on Sundays - I dreaded her emails.

Sunday, 3 p.m.

A quote from bell hooks or Toni Morrison meant to inspire, attached to a new protocol or spreadsheet. Bullet points. Reminders.

Praise shaped like surveillance. "Instructional spotlights" with maddeningly color-coded attachments.

It wasn't inspiration. It was compliance—documentation wrapped in intentionality.

Also a quiet reminder: your time isn't yours.

Subscribe now

Sunday Without Deliverables

I’m not sure when I let go of the Need to DO something thing. It didn’t happen all at once.

Monday doesn’t arrive freighted with rubrics, hallway studies, or an inspirationally-named laminated hallway pass policy. (No one should quote Audre Lorde or Malcolm X to justify toilets passes.)

She meant well, I think, making meaning in a system where language meant more than action. That manufactured acronyms and urgency, turning the care of children into compliance and presence into performance.

But out here—out of the inbox, off the clock, away from the curated quotes—we just live a Sunday. Quiet. Uneventful.

Musical interlude

Laissez-moi danser (Monday Tuesday) Dalida 1979

The incredible Dalida, deep in her disco period and this video does not disappoint. In 1979, Toto Cutugno’s Italian version of this song (Voglio l’anima) flopped—until Dalida’s brother and producer, Orlando, proposed a French disco remake. Cutugno, already a fan of Dalida, agreed, and it became Laissez-moi danser (Monday Tuesday).

It topped the French charts that summer, selling over 400,000 copies, and successful English (Let Me Dance Tonight) and Spanish (Déjame bailar) versions came later.

Has a change in place changed your life in other ways?

I have been constantly surprised by this and I am not sure if I knew the feeling then - or if I’m even describing it accurately now. But I feel like I am more aware of it and that is a change.

So - has a big change or a big moved changed things for you?