How To Make Your Weekends Feel Longer

Time off from work always goes by way too fast. Here, experts share how to make the most of your weekends. (Photo: Klaus Vedfelt via Getty Images)

Weekends never feel long enough. Whether it’s a regular two-day weekend or an extended (but, somehow, still short) three-day weekend, leisure time goes by much faster than work days.

While there isn’t a magical way to actually extend every weekend, there are ways to take advantage of the time off work, and, in turn, make your weekends feel more fulfilling.

According to Dr. Mike Sevilla, a family physician at the Family Practice Center of Salem in Ohio, weekends are even more important than you may think.

“People need physical time and space to relax and recharge their mind and body after a long work week,” Sevilla said.

Tracy Dumas, an associate professor in the management and human resources department atthe Ohio State University, added that “any break from work, [whether] vacations, weekends or even after work in the evening, is incredibly important for recovery.”

Recovery, Dumas added, is a “term used by organizational psychologists to capture the concept of replenishing resources depleted by the effort expended at work” — much as athletes need to recover and take rest days after tough workouts.

Here, experts share how to optimize those recovery days and make the most of your time off:

Plan out some of your time.

“You can make the most out of your weekend by planning to do activities that you enjoy,” said Alayna L. Park, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon.

She noted that creating a specific schedule for your weekend can help you follow through with the activities you want to do. This way, you don’t go into Sunday night feeling disappointed with the activities you did (or didn’t do). Read full article on Yahoo.

Mississippi Moms Share Horrors of Parenting During Water Crisis

Brad Vest/Getty Security personnel outside the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plan in Jackson, Miss.

Residents of Jackson, Miss., are currently battling through a water crisis that one woman says "has been building for decades." Having children at home makes it even more difficult.

Mom Brooke Floyd, 43, tells PEOPLE that many of her fellow Jackson residents are both "angry and frustrated" after being left without reliable running water for more than a month.

Jackson has been under a boil water order for over 30 days due to issues with the water system, which has left some residents with little to no water at all. The problem was exacerbated by the recent flooding of the Pearl River, which resulted in a temporary decrease in water production across the city.

RELATED: Here's How Mississippi Residents Are Coping During the Jackson Water Crisis

Deneka Samuel, a mom of six children ages 4 to 19, says it can be challenging at times during the crisis, and is hoping to see improvement soon.

"It's hard and it's a struggle, but we're going to keep on and keep on and keep on fighting," she tells PEOPLE.

The water went completely out on Monday, according to Floyd, a mother of four, including 6-year-old twins. "We turned on the faucets and there wasn't any water," she says, explaining that it's since come back sporadically.

What water has been coming into Samuel's house has been brown, leaving her in a constant cleaning frenzy to ensure her kids aren't coming in contact with it. "I have to make sure I keep my house sanitized," she says. "I clean up every day so there won't be [any] bacteria or germs. And I have to watch my kids closely so they don't touch the water in the sink and get sick."

Basic tasks like cooking, bathing or even going to the bathroom have become massive chores for Samuel. She cooks and has everyone brush their teeth with bottled water and uses jugs of water to fill the toilet before flushing (toilet paper, she says, goes in a bag for worries of the pipes backing up).

Read Full Article On Yahoo.

Music Community Plans Protest to Condemn Sexual Violence

Protest flyers are seen taped on an Indiana Avenue utility pole March 31, 2022. Organizers hung multiple flyers around campus to spread word of Saturday’s event at the East Studio Building. Some of those flyers have been torn down and defaced with offensive writing.

Since January, Jacobs School of Music students have been pushing for more in-depth conversations and tangible solutions after an Indiana Daily Student investigation detailed a sexual misconduct case.

Students have attended town halls, conversed with faculty and staff and posted on social media to express their fears and concerns. In internal conversations, the university often stifled conversations, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and barred students from discussing the specifics of the case. 

Now, those dismayed students are asking for more. 

At 5 p.m. Saturday, students and the music community are gathering at the East Studio Building to protest and demand answers from their institution. Within their list of demands, they are asking for the university to condemn sexual violence, better protect survivors and forge a safer community. 

The IDS investigation, which prompted the protest, describes how music student Chris Parker was should have been expelled or charged by police, or both, when he breached his suspension stemming from a sexual assault. The university did not follow these terms of his suspension, which are detailed in a document obtained by the IDS. He was allowed back as a student twice after that. Organizer and alumna Abby Malala said the university needs to follow through on the promises they make in their policies.

"It's very important to us that if a survivor is told that certain action will be taken that that promise to them follows through," she said.

Parker is a starting point for much larger conversations about sexual assault and how the university handles Title IX investigations and sanctions, she said. After the stunting of previous conversations, Malala hopes the university recognizes how infuriated students are about what she calls a "miserable miscarriage of justice."

Read more here.

Melissa B. Goes Down In History To Host First-Ever Single Release Party On The Metaverse

Melissa B. is an award-winning singer/songwriter and known for her outstanding performance of the national anthem at Barclays Center during the Celtics vs Nets Game. She is a USA #1 Billboard R&B / Pop charted artist, speaker, and actress. She stunned everyone with her amazing vocals before the game and left the audience in awe.

She is hosting the first-ever single release party in the Metaverse on 2/22/22 at 7 PM EST. To RSVP click here.

“Physical” is a straight-up R&B cut with a smooth dance groove in which Melissa B. is giving you that feel good R&B tune. This R&B tune is about connecting with your lover, giving her the love and attention she deserves. This song is a combination of mechanical instruments and Melissa's beautiful, melodic voice.

Melissa B. - Physical - Virtual Single Release Party

Join us on February 22

Melissa B. is doing the very first every "Virtual Single Release Party" in the Metaverse.

This is the first of its kind and you will be a part of history with Melissa B.

This release party you will be able to interact with others on your Laptop, iPhone, Android, and or VR Headset ( Oculus).

“Physical” is the new song written by B. Howard, produced by B. Howard, Kyle Beatz & engineered by Grammy recipient Michael Ashby who was responsible for recording Cardi B.’s song “Bodak Yellow”.


“Physical” is available on Beatify, the first fair-trade blockchain streaming platform and all other streaming platforms released through Amada Records.

RSVP and the day of the event emails will be sent out with the private link.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Visit her Website and follow her movement on Instagram and purchase her new single on SongWhip.

To help you get a sense of how vague and complex a term “the metaverse” can be, here's an exercise to try: Mentally replace the phrase “the metaverse” in a sentence with “cyberspace.” Ninety percent of the time, the meaning won't substantially change. That's because the term doesn't really refer to any one specific type of technology, but rather a broad shift in how we interact with technology. And it's entirely possible that the term itself will eventually become just as antiquated, even as the specific technology it once described becomes commonplace.

Broadly speaking, the technologies that make up the metaverse can include virtual reality—characterized by persistent virtual worlds that continue to exist even when you're not playing—as well as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, it doesn't require that those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR. A virtual world, like aspects of Fortnite that can be accessed through PCs, game consoles, and even phones, could be metaversal.

It also translates to a digital economy, where users can create, buy, and sell goods. And, in the more idealistic visions of the metaverse, it's interoperable, allowing you to take virtual items like clothes or cars from one platform to another. In the real world, you can buy a shirt from the mall and then wear it to a movie theater. Right now, most platforms have virtual identities, avatars, and inventories that are tied to just one platform, but a metaverse might allow you to create a persona that you can take everywhere as easily as you can copy your profile picture from one social network to another.

Read more here.

Anais Mitchell's Watershed Moment

“Watershed,” the closing track on indie-folk songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s first solo record in 10 years, is a reflection of where her life has taken her. Despite releasing her last collection, Young Man in America, in 2012, she’s stayed notoriously busy throughout that timeframe. Her 2010 studio album, Hadestown, was transmogrified into a full-blown Broadway musical, and it won eight Tonys in 2019, including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The following year, she gave birth to her second child. She also formed an indie-folk supergroup, Bonny Light Horseman, alongside two fellow folk mainstays: trusted collaborator of Taylor Swift and The National Josh Kaufman, and Fruit Bats frontman Eric D. Johnson.

That’s why “Watershed” chronicles Mitchell’s journey: It explores the trek for discovering one’s purpose in life, and how that experience can feel gradual and imperceptible. “The tallest summit you look up to, someday it’s gonna look small to you,” she sings. “There’s a new one coming into view.”

“That word kept coming back to me because I found myself at a watershed moment in my life,” Mitchell tells MTV News. “But I felt like, ‘Oh, I’m looking back and seeing everything in my rearview mirror. There’s this new terrain, and I don’t know quite what it is, but I’m at a moment where I can see it.’ You don’t get that many of those moments in a lifetime, but they come at different times.”

The prolific folk artist didn’t intend to take a break from solo music for a decade. But that’s exactly why she didn’t make a solo record for this long: She didn’t actually take a break. Mitchell became preoccupied with other projects, and she enjoys dedicating her energy to one endeavor at a time. After finishing up her work on Hadestown, Mitchell retreated to a “weird, old church” in Hurley, New York, to create her new self-titled album, out Friday (January 28), alongside her closest friends and collaborators. The list includes her Bonny Light Horseman bandmate Kaufman, The National’s Aaron Dessner, and strings savant Nico Muhly. That sense of companionship is palpable through the music.  On songs like “On Your Way (Felix Song)” and “Brooklyn Bridge,” she’s surrounded by rich arrangements and warm performances, courtesy of her close creative partners.

Mitchell spoke with MTV News about what it was like returning to solo music, how Broadway and the indie-music realm are both similar and different, the musical and non-musical inspirations behind her new record, and more.

MTV News: How are the worlds of Broadway and indie-folk music different?

Anaïs Mitchell: I think a lot of people had this experience in the pandemic, but I went to a private space that I hadn’t been in a long time. I had a very dramatic exit from New York City. We were living in Brooklyn, I was nine months pregnant with our second baby, and when the pandemic hit New York, I just didn’t want to give birth in the city. So we fled [to Vermont]. It was one day, we took our only kid out of school. Then we didn’t have a car. We had given up our car because we didn’t need it, so I was like, “We’re buying a car! Let’s go buy a car so we have an escape vehicle.” Then the next day, Broadway shut down and I was like, “We’re out of here.”

I was a little bit shielded from the public eye [of Hadestown] because I’m the writer. People were so focused on our incredible actors that it didn’t feel like I was the figurehead of that show, but it did feel like a lot of public time. It was all a learning curve for me; I had never done that before, where you go to a new opening of a musical or play. There’s a red carpet and you have to look good and get your picture taken, and then it shows up on the internet. It was fun and exhilarating [to go to Vermont] and just be like, “Wow, no one can see us now. We’re just in the middle of nowhere.”

MTV News: With Hadestown, you got to be behind the scenes, but you have a Tony now. Does it feel like having a bigger audience has changed your writing process?

Mitchell: I don’t think it’s changed my writing at all. I feel like I’m only capable of writing what passes through my heart. I know what you’re talking about though because a lot of folks on my social media are from Broadway. I notice this because when I post something about Broadway, everyone is like, “We like that!” And then I’m like, “My folk band made a new record,” and it’s just crickets! It’s not entirely like that, but I’m aware that a lot of folks did come from that world.

But they’re not worlds apart. It’s storytelling through music, and that’s what happens on Broadway, and that’s what happens with songwriting for Bonny Light Horseman and also this record. These stories happen to be my own ones. This album is not larger than life. It is life-sized. The songs are all me singing them. I’m the speaker in the song, which is a sort of rarity for me.

MTV News: How does writing for Broadway differ from writing a traditional album?

Mitchell: Hadestown began as a stage show before that studio record came out in 2010. There was this early Vermont, DIY community-theater version of the thing. It was pretty abstract, but it was a theatrical event, not just a concert. The intention was always for it to be an opera or a musical. It wasn’t a loosely affiliated collection of songs that then became adapted. But the grad-school part of learning how to write Hadestown, what works for the music world doesn’t cut it for the theater. The audience needs there to be results at the end of the songs, like a revelation or a decision that gets made. You go from A to B. That is how the story moves along and the characters move along. So I think writing folk songs or pop songs is very circular. You set up a thing, then you return to the chorus, and there’s this beauty in the roundness of it.

MTV News: What were some of the musical or non-musical inspirations behind this record?

Mitchell: Returning to my childhood home, a lot of stuff came out of that. I was living in my grandma’s house. I had this new baby. I found a box of my old journals from high school and college. I read a bunch of them. I burned some of them because they were so embarrassing. I found these letter correspondences between my grandma and me. I had a lot of memories of that house and what it was like being a child there. It feels cliché to say it, but it was a powerful time for me to return home. There was a lot in my rearview mirror. You know how it is when you’re in the place where you grew up and you run into your English teacher from ninth grade or your friend’s mom. There’s this meeting of the minds where you’re like, “I’m a grown-up now.”

It’s amazing how some objects hold so much power, like these journals. Or this one dress or mirror in my grandma’s house, and I remember my grandma getting dressed in this mirror. All these objects feel like a portal through time, these chairs, these spoons, the garden, the smells and sounds of the place you grew up. It’s really deep and bypasses your conscious mind. It goes right to the heart.

MTV News: You have so many albums under your belt now. How do you think your self-titled record fits within the broad landscape of your discography?

Mitchell: I think I’m the last person to know! I never listen to my old records because I can’t handle it. It’s a more mysterious and intuitive thing than being like, “I’m gonna try to do something like this.” But I would say there are a few things that made this process really different. The way that we made [Bonny Light Horseman] was very live and field recording-ish in a way. Half of the record we recorded at this artist residency. We were in this room in Berlin with the mics set up, and we’d be like, “Hey, someone’s in the hall! Hey, it’s one of [folk group] the Barr Brothers! Will you come in and play drums on this track?” That’s the way in which it felt like a field recording. Josh [Kaufman] is very good at capturing a live moment. He’s very focused as a producer, but he’s got that Jedi thing where it feels like you’re just hanging out, but he’s chasing a sound and a feeling. He shines in the world where the music shines and catches a vibe. I didn’t know that’s what I wanted for this, but it quickly became clear that that’s how we were going to make this record.

MTV News: What’s one thing that you hope people take away from this album?

Mitchell: As a songwriter, I have more and more interest in what the intersection is between what feels true for me, and where that intersects with what is universal and mythical. I hate to even say it. I don’t want to make a mom record, but these things are real for me. I hope it speaks to people who aren’t in my particular life phase. I’d love it if it would speak to people at different places.