This morning dawned as damp and unappealing as a washcloth left in a puddle overnight. Hazy attempts at blue stain the cloud cover outside my window, but the effect just depresses me; even the gloom is halfhearted today. Morning air hangs sodden over my nose and mouth, and I file through my collection of coping mechanisms for something that won’t A) leave me feeling like I squandered this gift of time or B) result in me having to explain to the rest of my family why all the chocolate chip cookies have disappeared.
I settle on a butter-yellow candle and Sigur Rós in the headphones. Immediately, I remember a comment I recently saw on a photo of Sigur Rós in concert: “Too bad they’re endorsing in homosexual & promiscuous live styles, violent environment protection & Neo-paganism – Nordic worship.” Oh, Internet Comment Sections. You win again with your unique interpretation of grammar and utter incomprehension of The Point.
The Point of my candle and my gay puffin-worshiping music, of course, is to reinfuse my senses with beauty. Weekends can be so depleting in that regard—my hours unstrung from their usual weekday progression and looped around the laundry basket, the dinner guests, the pages of curlicued a’s that Sophie needs to finish for homework—and as much as I love the concept of diving headfirst into Monday morning, I inevitably start the week with an aching need to backtrack and collect myself from where it was dropped on Friday.
This has long frustrated me. The comic book version of myself that my imagination keeps on file is steadier than this. She doesn’t lose her sense of footing or the rhythm of her creative pulse after a mere two days of busy distraction. Her laser vision catches the sparkle of life beyond the weekend, and she can relax into the happy confusion of game nights and home improvement projects knowing that her super self will be waiting, suited up and ready to go, on the other side.
The real me, the one sporting reading glasses and unwashed hair (true to form, our building’s hot water went out again for the weekend and is now sleeping off its hangover on a friend’s ratty couch somewhere), the me who is equally unhinged by runaway schedules and the color gray, the un-heroic, un-super, un-steady me has yet to make peace with weekends. It is how it is. But not how I want it to be. If I am allowed so much want in a life already characterized by abundance, I would add this: that I want to make peace with time’s anomalies, find joy in them even, and retain such a vibrant sense of presence throughout that Monday mornings of the future will find me already in forward motion.
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Do you experience weekends as disruptions or rewards… or something entirely different? What is your routine for transitioning back to the Monday morning world?
I hear you. I am wishing for some candle-lighting time myself. xoxo
Sounds like we need to form an Un-Weekend Rebel Relaxers Club, eh Megsie?