I’m a single mom and just agreed to shared custody. The amount of ‘me time’ is overwhelming.

Nicola Prentis has more time for herself after agreeing to shared custody.

When my ex and I switched to alternate weeks of shared custody of our two kids three months ago, the “me time” I’d fantasized about for years was suddenly a reality.

Whereas before I was running between school pickups, juggling work, and squeezing haircuts or medical appointments into school hours, I now have seven days to fill how I please.

The trouble is that I haven’t had stretches of time like this to myself for over 10 years — not since I was single and child-free. At first, I wasn’t sure what I even liked doing or who I was when not a parent. Did I have hobbies?

When I was single, I lived in a few cities, always surrounded by lots of friends — we would be out and about most nights.

My ex and I lived in Madrid, but after having our first baby, we moved to Girona in Spain’s Catalonia region for a smaller and quieter setting. Even after my partner left me, life didn’t change that much, as I was already the primary caregiver of our children, who rarely went out for anything other than playdates.

As nice as all the parents I’d met along the way are, I knew right away that there was no way I was hanging out with their kids when I wasn’t with mine.

It left a lot of empty time to fill.

Evenings and weekends are hard to fill

My days are still crammed with running my business. But after years of balancing life as a single mom and now having fewer distractions, I’m already more productive. I’m scheduling marketing content six weeks ahead. I can accept meetings outside school hours, though it’s too soon to say if my earning level has increased with my extra time.

But weekends and evenings loom over me. With no school run and less need to grocery shop, these “days off” have no structure and no built-in reason to stop work or leave the house.

During my first free week, I remember sitting at home waiting for something to happen. Spoiler alert: Nothing did. It was going to get depressing fast.

The following week, I bought a bike and made it my mission to be as busy as I was 10 years ago. I’ve started going on joyful rides along the countryside roads as often as I can.

But this didn’t help with creating a social life. I’ve found that the local bike-riding scene isn’t very open because there’s a clear distinction between “being a cyclist” and “riding a bike.”

So I made a list of everyone I knew, from my 85-year-old neighbor to anyone who’s ever said, “Hey, we should do something sometime,” and never followed through. Half the people I’ve met up with have turned out to be on the brink of divorce, so I imagine I’ll have more singles to hang out with over the next year or so.

A taste of my old life was hard to recover from

For the third week, I went back to Madrid to visit friends. People made time to see me as soon as they knew I was in town. One night, the friend I was staying with invited her friend for a drink. On the way home, she got a message from other friends eating at a restaurant on her street, so we joined them.

This was exactly how I remembered my old social life: spontaneous and easy. It was a harsh reminder of how hard it is to build something like that again.

The comedown when I returned to regular life was brutal. That weekend, a once-a-year meteor shower was visible a few miles outside the city, and I had no one I could spontaneously call to go camp out and see it. I realized that while I call this boredom, it’s a far deeper feeling: loneliness.

I turned to the modern solution for loneliness: Apps

I went for an option that matched the soullessness of my mood and resuscitated my dating-app profile. At least there’s no pretending that the process is anything other than mechanical.

To my surprise, I had two pretty good first dates over the next couple weeks, though it felt a little like beginner’s luck as nothing’s gone beyond a few messages since.

The week after, I discovered an app for reserving discounted surprise bags of food at supermarkets, bakeries, and restaurants that would otherwise get thrown out. Like dating apps, choosing a surprise bag involves a bit of scrolling and getting my hopes up that it’ll contain a pleasant surprise and not a load of limp lettuce. I felt some butterflies when I went to pick up my first food bag, and overall, I preferred it to the dating app.

If I work at it, I won’t always see such a contrast between my old life and my new one. And it’s probably the best preparation for empty-nest days when my children leave home for good. But I can’t help wishing filling my free time felt less like work.