Sunday, May 18, 2008

A Week In The Life Of Joe

I’ve determined that weekends are the best times for revealing how desperately inept one is at living life. Here’s the way things typically tend to shake out for me on weekends. Actually, to get a better idea, it’s best to start with Mondays – the days on which, usually, my weekend expectations begin to form. Mondays usually begin with an unpleasant discovery: that in the intervening time between Sunday night bed-time and Monday morning wake-time, a miracle has, in fact, failed to occur yet again, and I will, in fact, have to deal with each week day in due course and miss out on skipping right ahead to Friday night. Such is life (imagine that in a French accent). These types of dark epiphanies are much less common throughout the week, but have been known to occur as late as about Wednesday morning.

Skip ahead to Thursday. I actually like Thursdays quite a bit. They consist largely of the promise of freedom – a certain kind of over-the-hump-ness mixed with a feeling that scores of hours are coming in which I can breathe and run free, sleep in (although I usually prefer to be up sometime before 9 on weekends), and regain the sanity that evaporates off me like steam during the week. Thursdays are great because the next day is Friday, and then you can wear jeans to work! (Never mind the fact that many of my coworkers and I often wear jeans the other days of the week. Never mind that now.)

Friday arrives. Fridays are good, partly because of jeans, but most importantly because of the unshakeable optimism that accompanies knowing that any crap you have to deal with today you most assuredly won’t have to deal with tomorrow (that is, unless you are one of those “task-oriented” employees instead of a “time-oriented” employee, like me…). Ah yes, Fridays. And then it happens. Five o’clock. Everybody saying, “have a good weekend.” Weekend? Hm. I always arrive at this point underprepared. Suddenly I have 63 hours of freedom that I have absolutely no idea what to do with. How can that be, you ask? Let me explain.

In honesty, I have plenty of ideas what I’d like to do on a weekend. They’re the types of things that tend to break the budget, or the inseam, or come across as violations of spousal peace treaties. That is to say, the consumer in me knows exactly what to do with weekends and a debit card. That’s the problem – that dude is a total asshole. And if asshole is left unchecked all weekend, then Monday rolls around and taunts me, in all its sick irony, “time to do it all over again.” Usually, though, those voices in my head start their harassment by Sunday night. It seems they’ve found that it’s best to ease people into despondency, rather than springing it on them all at once.

“Joe,” you say, “it sounds like you’ve been noticing this thing going on for a while.” “Yes,” I answer, “I have.” “Joe,” you continue, “have you thought about planning out your weekends in advance?” “Why yes,” I respond, “I have. In fact, that’s exactly what I did this weekend. I took some time during the day Friday to plan out, wisely I might add, both the sorts of things I would need and want to do this weekend. Additionally, I found some time for my wife and I to communicate about these things, so we could both talk about what we hoped to do this weekend.” “Joe,” you exclaim, “that’s great! How did it go?” “Well,” I sigh, “you’ll be reading about it on my blog. I might label it ‘downbeat something-or-other’.” “Oh.” “Oh.”

Yes, so that brings me to this weekend. Was it horrible? Not entirely – because, for all my shortcomings, I did succeed in one thing: making both my wife and I painfully depressed by late yesterday evening. Score. On my own goal. Kathryn and I have both been wanting to pursue creative projects more in our free time, rather than just watching TV or doing something totally passive like that. (Granted, she can typically be working on some kind of craft project while watching TV, but I certainly can’t. I don’t multitask – TV and activity are like oil and water for me.) So, she comes to me in the afternoon and asks, “Want to work on a video together?” After a little inertia on my part, I decide that I would like to try to brainstorm a project we can do together. So we both brainstorm independently (she’s showering at this point) – collaborative brainstorming sessions have previously tanked in prior instances of this exact situation. Then, a little while later, we both come together to share the ideas we’re both excited about. Let’s just say, our ideas meshed about as well as cold water and wood fire. Creative momentum: successfully managed, i.e., squelched.

I’ll save you the rest of the details (other than clarification that this really wasn’t a fight by any stretch of the imagination – we just had vastly different visions and couldn’t get on the same page, or in this case, even be reading the same book), because I’m short on time and they’re depressing anyways. Suffice it to say we did manage to find a little enjoyment watching Steve Carell host Saturday Night Live. Oh well. Whatever.

Lord, I feel I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Now, I don’t fault you for any of this. You’re not, historically speaking, the one who botches things up so much as the one who steps in and repairs the damage, making things right and good again. But (and, you know, big one or whatnot…), I need some help here, and not just a little. Life just seems more complex and complicated than I can handle. Maybe I’m the one making it difficult, but I need to be taught before I can be expected to perform. You’ve given me an airplane, but I’ve only ever learned to drive a car. You know I want to fly, because a guy can barely walk down here without being assaulted by a thousand damn billboards. You know I’m tired of buying their crap. Teach me to fly. Forgive me for all I’ve spent poorly. Teach me to fly. Forgive me for loving anyone who looked me in the eyes or flashed me a smile, and the stuff they peddle. Teach me to fly. Forgive me for buying when they told me I could be like you without you. Teach me to fly.

Well, time to wrap things up, lest I risk ending it there on a deceptively high note (a ‘false positive’, perhaps?). Moral of the story? Weekends are overrated. Avoid them if at all possible. Weekdays? Avoid those as well, if you can. But since that doesn’t really leave you with much, if anything, I suppose I will leave you with this final dino-nugget of wisdom and ray of ambiguity: make the most of your Thursdays.

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