Today is the first time I’ve actually felt well since December 30th. Two weeks doesn’t seem like a long time until you spend most of it feeling like warm death. So, in a phrase, I’m very happy to put the worst of this bug behind me. The house is a wreck, there’s not a bit of food in the pantry, and the dogs seem a little surprised to see me doing something other than laying around on the couch. It seems that the priority for the rest of the weekend will be trying to undo two weeks of laziness. Giving the place a good scrub should probably be the first thing on the list. This house has a creepy ability to attract dust and grime. I think getting rid of it will go a long way towards confirming for myself that I’m actually feeling better. Other than that, plans for the long weekend include absolutely nothing other than possibly sticking my nose in a book and keeping the hot coffee flowing. Some people wouldn’t find that fulfilling, but after not doing much other than staring at the TV, anything that engages the brain is a welcome change of pace.
Tag Archives: weekend
Post holiday meh…
It’s officially the time of year when there’s really nothing to look forward to. I’ve burned off my mountain of annual leave and I’m sitting here looking at a calendar with way too many meetings and far too few days off marked up. There’s something bad for the soul about staring into the teeth of too many five-day work weeks in a row. Maybe it’s time to start plotting where I can sneak off to for spring break. Just because I finished off my undergrad degree the better part of two decades ago doesn’t mean I should go somewhere warm and enjoy the sights, right? Now that I think about it, it’s possible I have something to look forward to after all. Besides, Martin Luther King Day is coming up next week. That’s as good a reason for a long weekend as any.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Lame…
It’s good to start the weekend with a closet full of freshly laundered clothes. The fact that laundering those clothes is what I’ve done so far on my Friday night is pretty lame. It would possibly be forgivable if I were going to change into some of those cleaned clothes and go do something interesting, but what’s really going to happen is I’m going to hit the couch with my iPad and read until I can’t keep my eyes open. Then I’ll take the dogs out and go to bed. Probably around 10:00. Yeah. Lame. But I’ll bounce out of bed at 6:45 tomorrow morning feeling rested and reasonably well put together… Which in retrospect is probably also a cause for concern. Although since that’s sleeping in by almost two hours, maybe it’s not so bad, right? Right? *insert cricket chirps*
Wasted Sunday…
This hasn’t been the sunday I thought I was going to have. Mostly it involved dragging the computer down from the office (not all that hard since it’s a laptop) and spreading out the dozen odds and ends I’ve been putting off around the kitchen table and taking them on one after another. The good news is that I just shredded the last bit of paper and closed the last file. The bad news is that I’ve been sitting here in the kitchen hammering at the keyboard since almost 8:00 this morning. That’s pretty much the working definition of a wasted Sunday. Sure, it’s all stuff that needed done and I’d been putting some of it off for weeks now, but that doesn’t make looking at the tail end of the weekend any easier… Especially when you know you’re going to spend the next five days hammering away at a different keyboard. I’m glad it’s all done, I just wish I could have figured out a way to do it in half the time. You know when going down to the crawlspace to shut off the outside water spigots counts as a break, you’ve seriously misspent your day.
For the time being, I’ll take as much comfort as possible in knowing that getting this particular pile of stuff done now frees me up next weekend. The long break coming after the next two work weeks is definitely a high point. I’ll do my best to live in the moment, but for the record my head is already in Western MD complaining about how friggin’ cold it is up here.
Lacking motivation…
I don’t guess anyone really looks forward to Mondays, but most of the time I can muster enough interest to get up and moving without too many issues. Looking at a work week that’s only going to be two days long makes that level of motivation completely impossible. Let’s be realistic shall we. In the face of a five day weekend, I’m going to be mentally checked out the minute I walk in the door tomorrow. Admitting that out loud probably doesn’t make me a model employee, but fortunately I’ve only ever claimed to be good, not great so that’s fine. So if anyone needs me for the next two days I’ll be the guy trying to keep his head down and hoping everyone else is doing the same.
Gettin’ Down on Friday…
I don’t know that I’ve ever had what would be considered a “good” Friday in government service. Fridays are the day when everyone wants to extend their weekend. On any typical Friday you can expect at least a third of the staff to be somewhere other than in the office. It’s easily double that on a Friday before a scheduled 3-day weekend. This is bad for two reasons. First, in the event that something actually needs to get done, finding someone to do it is a challenge at best. It’s even more problematic if you want to find the right someone or even just a random body who has the actual skill sets you need. Good luck with that. In the event that there is no Friday crisis, you’re probably going to discover more common situation of there being absolutely nothing to do. Usually that will set in a few minutes after lunch.
You can only refresh cnn.com so many times before realizing you’ve already red all the articles. I mean, it wouldn’t be so bad if the IT guys didn’t block most of the really interesting sites. Alternately, you could listen to the guy next door tell the same old stories he’s been telling since the first time you met. If you’re really lucky, some of your equally bored colleagues might be up for a game of Words with Friends. Otherwise, you’re doomed to spend the next three hours trying to look like you’re busy enough that it keeps the boss from creating work for you to do… because really, if there’s anything worse than being bored, it’s getting saddled with random busywork.
Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.
Putting the fried in Friday…
This is one of those weeks where the best thing you can say about it is simply “it’s over.” Some weeks are bound to be like that. It’s unavoidable. That doesn’t make me any less happy to see them slide by under the stern. Not that the weekends are any less frantic, but they’re frantic in a different way… You know, full of doing things that I’m actually interested in. Not that churning out 100-page reports, briefing slides, and spreadsheets isn’t fun and all, but I’m more than ready to let my eyes uncross for a few days. A week or two would be better, but I’ll take what I can get. I’m going to try staying away from the monitor this weekend, so we’ll pick this up again Monday… Unless something really gets on my nerves between now and then, in which case you know I can’t resist the temptation to post right away.
Coming down…
Coming down off a 4-day glut of not having all that much to do is a tough one. I don’t exactly want to hang out at home doing nothing for a fifth day, but I don’t exactly want to go to the office and sit at my desk doing considerably more than nothing either. I was just starting to get use to a non-geriatric bedtime and not being awake for two hours before the sun even bothered to come up. The only thing that’s certain is that tomorrow is going to be tough… but it’s a toughness tempered by the fact that it’s only going to be a three day week for me and then I’ll roll back into the happy embrace of another long weekend.
Time management…
I’m a good employee. I’m conscientious, pugnacious, and attentive to detail. I get things done on time and do my best to at least project the illusion of confidence. For the most part, things are reasonably busy and productive (as long as you count meetings as “productive” time). Even on those busy days, once I get back from lunch the days just drag. The 120 minutes between 2 and 4 seem to pass at the same relative speed of the six hours between 7 and 11. I’m sure some big-brained psychologist out there has a good and rational explanation for why that is, but a cursory Google of the issue hasn’t returned any really satisfactory answers.
And don’t get me started on the weekends. They go by so fast that they’re practically non-existent. Seriously, damnit. I no more than wake up on Saturday morning and suddenly it’s Monday again and I’m schlepping down Route 40 with a thermos full of coffee and a bleary-eyed slightly dazed look on my face. Sure, time flies when you’re having fun and all, but should it really fly when all you’re doing is cutting the grass, cooking a few meals, and picking up a bag of dog food? When you’ve figured out the secret to this time management dilemma, let me know.
Sitting here on a Monday night, all I know is that I want my weekend back. Or I want to start my next career as a PowerBall winner. Either way’s good.
That time…
It’s getting close to that time on Sunday. You all know the time. That moment when you realize it’s late into Sunday afternoon and you have absolutely no interest in doing whatever it is your overlords and paymasters want you to do on Monday. Maybe that’s the cosmic joke. We spend a quarter of the weekend annoyed that it’s about to be over. I suppose that’s offset a bit by wasting half the day Friday looking forward to the end of the day, but still it seems like a less than optimal trade off. In an hour or two I’ll start thinking about dinner. Not long after that, I’ll notice the sun has started to drop behind the trees. Then there will be a 50 minute reprieve thanks to HBO. But after that, Monday is the inevitable next stop. Meh. I’m not feeling it this week.
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