Monday, October 03, 2005

Eight Days A Week

"Time keeps flowing like a river to the sea."
-Alan Parsons
It certainly makes human beings happy to think about time as a constant. I thought of this today as I dragged through the end of the day and grumbled like somebody who "had a case of the Mondays." It gave me some mild hope to imagine that as days pass that they will somehow become qualitatively better. Tuesday will be better because it's closer to Friday. Wednesday is hump-day (as in "over the hump"). Then the eager anticipation of Thursday comes with the elusive abandon of Friday. Anecdotally, my wife tends to wake up Friday mornings as I am heading toward the door and shout at me "Hey, it's Friday!" Well, I suppose that's true, but it's also Friday morning before work has begun and I guess we all know how quick things can go south on any day of the week, EVEN Friday.
"Workin' for the weekend"
-Loverboy
When Saturday arrives, I am constantly amazed that there was once a time that I was able to sleep past eight in the morning. I suppose it helped that staying up past two in the morning while using and abusing various chemicals made it more important for my body to recuperate, but I can remember in my early teens being able to linger in bed until past noon. Not anymore - too much to do, too little time - just like the White Rabbit.
Still, what if we've got it all wrong? What if we're just living out this period of time as a series of connected events and our brains just loves to make connections that establish order. Beginning, middle, end. If we let that go, then Monday is just the name of some time that happens occasionally and we don't need to assign a feeling to it, just because it's first. Even if you don't buy all this relativity nonsense, what about the absurdity of the five-day work week? The weekend is made for Michelob, and yard work, and taking a trip to that little bed and breakfast because if you went during the week it would be wrong and bad and productivity would suffer and the gross national product is depending on you so you'd better by golly be on time Monday morning or else.
I'm going to start my week on Wednesday from now on. That way, when somebody comes dragging in I'll make a point of saying, "Looks like somebody's got a case of the Wednesdays."

1 comment:

Kristen Caven said...

A fine idea, to start your work week on Wednesdays. I personally think a 4-day workweek would do wonders for the economy, not to mention our sanity. But which day to add to the weekend? Monday or Friday? Or maybe make Wednesday the third rest day - then we could enjoy our "weekmidddles."