We all long for those open days with nothing standing between us and an extended outing on our beloved motorcycles. No plans or obligations, a pleasant weather forecast, machinery in good working order, and no shortage of route options. The imagery is idyllic, and often the realization is as good or better than the anticipation. Then again, to paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…

Actually, what I’m referring to here isn’t the fate of our best laid plans, but rather the perfectly expectable outcome of less than adequate planning. We can mistake the imagined ride, pictured quite vividly but in only vague abstractions, for something more concrete and well-thought-out. When the time comes to make it happen, we find gaping holes in our preparations. We may have failed to coordinate with riding buddies and then find they’re unable to join on short notice. Or maybe we didn’t settle on a route, only to find choosing one next to impossible as we’re about to leave (similar to the “analysis paralysis” that can set in when trying to select a movie from the countless possibilities on our streaming services—by the time we make a decision, it’s too late to watch it). There are lots of ways we can end up with a whopping disappointment where we had expected jubilation. Here I’ll examine one of the confounding factors that may be involved.

While “having nothing to do” presumably means we can do whatever else we choose, it can also be an end in itself. In other words, what we want is the freedom to truly do nothing. Life can be so packed with demands for performance, productivity and efficiency that we desperately need a break from anything of the sort. Planning, even for something we enjoy and desire, can feel like one more burdensome chore. We want two things that are apt to be mutually exclusive: liberation from any structure that impedes our moment-to-moment autonomy and experiences that must be structured if they’re going to happen as we wish. If I spend my week accommodating other people’s schedules at work and at home, I don’t want to have to do more of the same on a weekend ride. Therefore, I don’t commit myself to checking with potential ride partners to see who’s available at which times so we can nail something down in our respective calendars. I don’t want to have to hustle to meet any more deadlines or arrange my day around yet another fixed agenda, but by avoiding these hassles I’m almost certainly ruining my chances of having the companionship I’d like my ride to include. I may well succeed in having nothing to do, or at least no one to do it with, on my wide open—now perhaps too empty—day.

Let’s say I’d rather ride alone and coordinating with others isn’t the issue. I still want to savor my autonomy on this day I cleared out for riding. I worked hard to get all other requirements taken care of in advance so there’s nothing hanging over my head. My bike and gear were set up for departure the night before. I’m completely cleared for takeoff. Then, as part of my determination to spend the day as I damn well please, I defiantly exercise my free will by sleeping late. My excitement about hitting the road early apparently wasn’t as strong as my need for a morning without the obnoxious prodding of my alarm clock. Now that I’m getting a tardy start, I have to jettison some of my route options. No problem, there are still plenty of good ones. Then I recall I heard something about a road closure that might be relevant to my choice. I look online to see what information about this I can find, but the facts remain unclear. In my wandering search, I get distracted by my news feed and then a sale announcement from my local dealership. Hmmm… maybe I’ll stop there on my way out of town; no, that would eat up more saddle time. On one hand, I’m relishing the ability to follow whatever whim occurs to me in the moment. This is the antithesis of so much of daily life, characterized by the relentless requirement to keep hustling from one preset task to another. Even when I enjoy—and may have even chosen—those activities, the clock-forced transitions are jarringly out of sync with my immediate preferences; I want to stick with this longer or begin the next thing sooner! Being able to dawdle and dither is a welcome change of pace, but then on the other hand I notice another hour has passed and my precious ride keeps shrinking. Eventually, I might question whether it’s worth going out at all if I’ll have to hurry back home after just a short loop. So much for my big day to ride—I’ve instead done nothing! But that may have been my unconscious goal all along.

Given the strictures of our routine existence, riding time is typically a treasured commodity. The rarer our opportunities, the more critically important it is to extract maximum gratification from each one of them. Riding can begin to feel as pressured as the rest of the week—or worse, the weeks, plural, that have passed since our last outing. Such pressure can become counterproductive as we try to squeeze too much into a ride, or expect too much out of it and then feel let down. When a chance to ride comes along, we’re compelled to “strike while the iron is hot,” regardless of whether we’ve made the necessary preparations. An impulsive escape might represent exhilarating spontaneity, but it could instead feel perfunctory and compulsory, just as forced as all the stuff we want to leave behind. Perhaps the storms forecast for Sunday veer away at the last minute and a day we’d expected to spend catching up on cleaning and paperwork is suddenly open for a much more enticing ride. Do we go, taking joyous advantage of this serendipity, or do we refrain, expecting such a ride to be plagued by the guilt of irresponsibility or the dread of tackling an even longer to-do list once we get back? When we return, are we refreshed and better able to take up those challenges, or is re-entry even more onerous?

Whether it’s a day we deliberately reserved for riding, or a free-time windfall that catches us by surprise, a lack of purpose and direction can subtract from the fulfillment we seek from motorcycling. Yet at the same time, this “bug” can also be a “feature” if we’re already exhausted by all the “purpose” and “direction” saturating the rest of our daily lives. Maybe we’d do best to just leave home with no aim in mind, except to wander the countryside aimlessly. But if we don’t get to ride much, that can feel like an unsatisfying use of what little saddle time we have. The dilemma is “quality time” can’t actually replace “quantity time” any more than we can eat enough one day to skip eating for the next month. Not every ride will be glorious, even if we get out so seldom that anything less leaves us feeling cheated—or perhaps frantically worried we’re wasting time while the clock ticks away.

With all the stress and drivenness of modern life, we need rest and relaxation along with recreation. Motorcycling, in all its various forms, can sometimes provide an element of passive recuperation, but this is not the same as recreation—a term I’m using to denote a more active, adventurous type of endeavor. I don’t mean something has to be strenuous or daring to count as recreation, but in my mind it does have to include some type of initiative, not merely a reprieve from externally imposed demands. People can blur these categories together and miss this distinction. Rest and relaxation are required in the context of both work and play. This is the normal cycle of exertion and recovery, whether we’re in the process of satisfying obligations or having fun. When we’re burned out by a lack of sufficient downtime, we typically prioritize this basic necessity over alternatives that would otherwise hold more appeal, though we’re not necessarily clear about this. Going for a ride can be extremely pleasurable, but that doesn’t mean we automatically have the energy for it. When we’re depleted from slogging through myriad stressful activities, we can have a stronger need to rest than to chase excitement. In fact, we can lose our taste for anything that requires mustering initiative. No matter how much we love pizza, we’ll find it nauseating after eating nothing else for days on end.

In order to have the energy to enjoy recreation, we may first need a period of rest. Hence, we might find ourselves unable to scrape together the wherewithal to plan a ride when we notice a day opening up on the horizon. We think about it, maybe envision aspects that would be nice, but we don’t lift a finger to ensure it will happen. Or, when the day arrives, we drag our feet, get distracted, and end up letting the opportunity slip away. This doesn’t mean we’re “bad” motorcyclists! It isn’t evidence of a lack of interest or investment, at least not in absolute terms. It could, however, represent a relative lack of enthusiasm compared to our even greater need for rest and refuge from chronic pressures to perform. Yes, motorcycling offers a wonderful escape from exactly those routine stressors, but we still must have enough vigor to make use of it; riding involves deliberate effort and focused engagement.

Depression is frequently characterized by a lack of both energy and interest, mimicking the kind of depletion I’ve been describing. Whereas depression can feature a powerful urge to retreat from activities and relationships, it isn’t remedied by simple rest and relaxation. Depressed people can think they just need to take a break, but something more is required for them to regain their vitality (what’s needed varies widely across different individuals). People who really do need to take a break can think they’re depressed. This interferes with their ability to accurately assess what’s wrong and what’s needed. They may, for example, be exhausted by anxiety-fueled compulsivity. They might be terribly afraid of what will happen if they don’t keep juggling all the balls they currently have in the air. In this context, the idea of resting just provokes more fear and can’t be seriously considered. They’re apt to construe their emotional distress as “just depression,” something best dismissed as a dangerous self-indulgence, with any passivity viewed as a slippery slope into permanent, perilous inertia.

Aside from clinical conditions that may require professional help, the episodic depletion inherent in an overly busy lifestyle is a formidable challenge in its own right, yet many people aren’t clearly aware of its causes and therefore can’t orient to possible solutions. It may seem obvious that a lack of drive indicates a need for rest—more accurately, restoration—but consider the examples I gave earlier of trouble launching a much-anticipated ride. Those difficulties could be mistakenly chalked up to laziness, disorganization, distractibility, lack of foresight, oppositionality or some other cognitive shortcoming or character flaw. Of course, factors like these may be relevant in a given case, but the role of chronic stress and its associated fatigue should be considered, too. Because we’re continuously immersed in pressures to be productive, we can grow numb to this context for our behaviors, even as we also develop a craving for the opposite—doing nothing. This is different from the desire for an empty square on the calendar, a space we can fill with exciting recreational pursuits. It is instead a manifestation of overwhelm, which is definitely not fixed by adding more stimulation.

The Ride Inside with Mark Barnes is brought to you by the MOA Foundation. You can join the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America quickly and easily to better take advantage of the Paul B. Grant and Clark Luster training reimbursement programs offered by the Foundation.