So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself with three days off in a row. It was almost as good as hitting the lottery. It’s an amazing feeling to walk out of your job’s front doors and know that you won’t have to be back until the fourth days. At that moment, you have the greatest amount of free time you’ll ever have for the next three days before you have to walk back through those same doors. The possibilities for your future are wide open! You could do anything you want! The sky is the limit (or at least, so you tell yourself)!
Need to clean the entire house (or, if you are a lowly hourly drone, an apartment)?
Have to finish editing all seven hundred pictures from that vacation you took a year ago - the one that everyone is still hounding you about putting up pictures for?
Have to make several shopping trips to buy things you hate wasting your time shopping for?
Want to go to the movies and watch six new releases??
Want to finally do a real nice detailing of your car?
Well, now you can! And if you can’t get to something the first day, YOU STILL HAVE TWO DAYS LEFT!
That’s how the thinking goes when you first leave the office, or the store, or whatever jail happens to be your workspace. You’re going to work on that story you’ve wanted to do justice in those three days instead of churn out one mediocre blog entry. Hell YEAH, you are!
But, oh, how quickly that feeling of invincibility fades!
That first day might feel pretty damn good, no doubt about it! You’re still getting lots done. You’re relaxing, not even thinking about work. And hey, the weather is perfect! It was as if Mother Nature was giving you this perfect day to go out and get things done. It’s okay if you haven’t started that story. You still have two days left!!!
That second day is still enjoyable because you still have that last day off. This is still a day where anything can happen! Perhaps you’ll mix some real housework during the day with a quiet stroll around the neighborhood with your spouse and dog(s). Besides, it’s still okay if you haven’t started that story. You still have that last day to stay up all night working on! You don’t need sleep that first day back. It’s a short shift, anyway!
Then that last day hits. You wake up, and despite not drinking the previous night, you have a heavy feeling in your gut. It’s that, “Oh, god, why did I do what I did last night?” feeling. That feeling of completely wasting your previous two days and realizing you don’t have enough time to do all the things you wanted to do in the remaining time you have left. That dread of having to deal with customers whose life stories you have long stopped caring about. That dread of having to fix issues your superiors hand to you because shit rolls downhill and they put it all off for three days. Soon, it becomes all you can think about and now, instead of enjoying that beautiful day Mother Nature is giving you on your last day off, you silently curse her because it’s as if Mother Nature’s mocking you.
“Have to go back to work? What a bummer! I plan on giving everyone else sunshine and 75 degrees for another day. And then when you have your next day off, I’m planning on unleashing a typhoon all day long, SUCKER!!”
So, instead of writing that story and getting something done (and feeling pretty good about it until you start to question the writing quality of it), you just churn out that mediocre blog entry.
I hope this has been more than mediocre for you all. I really need to focus and push myself to write. I’ve been slacking way too long on this shit.
I seriously don’t know where the three days went. I just know that it doesn’t make going back to work any easier knowing I had three days away. Here’s hoping my next day off arrives quickly!
More soon from the frontlines...
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