With the Lyndzapalooza landmark passed on my yearly calendar i’m in a bit of a drift. Bonnaroo, maybe, St. Louis in July, and then my birthday and Christmas and the whole thing starts all over again.
It’s a bleak outlook on the rest of a pretty good year, but i can’t seem to help that i’m starting to understand why everyone loves to complain about their jobs and longefor their weekends. You know what i mean; as a child they’re half the grownups you know and the majority of the adults on sitcoms, and even now it’s half your friends and half your co-workers.
My job is actually enjoyable, and it’s not that i like Saturday or Sunday any more than any of the other five days of the week. It’s just the centripetal force of circling around and around each week in the year. If you work a 9 to 5 job you can help but be drawn to the weekend like water circling a drain.
But what’s in that weekend? If you’re some people i know, the weekend is so packed full of activities – otherwise unachievable on a weeknight – that it’s just as much work as work. If you’re me the weekend is the same wasteland of exhaustion and listlessness as any weekend, just without intermittent workdays to break it up.
I’m starting to think that the key to adult happiness is staying away from both of those poles: don’t waste your weekend, but don’t lay yourself across it like a martyr either. Because, those fifty consecutive hours of “off” aren’t any different than the sixty-some non-consecutive hours of off you get during the week, which aren’t even that much different than the forty-some hours of work except that you get to do exactly what you want to do with them instead of what you should do with them. Except, maybe if you did what you should do they’d be more satisfying.
What do i know? I’m still pretty new at this grownup thing.