“Hanging around, nothing to do but frown. Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” — Paul H. Williams / Roger S. Nichols
As I type this, it’s both a rainy day and a Monday. Lucky for me, it’s also St. Patrick’s Day, so I will just blast the Clancy Brothers on my stereo all day. Mondays tend to be my busiest day, with deadlines and sorting out the week’s assignments and projects, so the tunes should help. It’s a day to open up my notebook and planner, figure out what is coming due and what can wait, and try to remember what I do for a living. It’s not like I spend every weekend partying and blacking out, but I usually do turn off the work part of my mind and focus on family and friends, so when Monday comes, I need a little time to regroup.
As a freelancer, it’s normal for me to have several projects going at once, to work different hours and days each week, and to work from wherever I happen to be, but now and then, I almost long for a more regular schedule. The norm for my career immediately after college was a firm routine of a commute, defined hours, and a particular set of duties that never changed much. It didn’t spark joy, and there were few surprises, but it kept me more organized.
When I worked a Monday to Friday 9-5 job, I knew that Saturday would involve a trip to the grocery store for lunch staples and dinner fixings for the menus I planned. Later, I’d empty the fridge of all the aging leftovers and set up my cheese snacks, grapes, and juice boxes (my lunch tastes were that of the average five-year-old.) Sunday afternoon and evening meant I’d be ironing work blouses, ensuring I had enough pantyhose for the week and that they didn’t have runs, and cleaning out my briefcase. It wasn’t exciting, but it worked.
Today, my career involves absolutely none of that. Most of the organization has completely unspooled. I’m ahead of the game if I remember to put the recycling out on the right day and have a vague idea of work topics. Lunch planning is now more like, “You know, I haven’t been to Bagel World lately,” and dinner menus are on a fridge magnet and are mostly for pizza delivery and takeout places.
However, I love that if an opportunity arises to go to lunch with a friend or hit the beach because the sun came out unexpectedly, I can usually rearrange a few things and make it happen. The flip side of that is I often look like some kind dimwit when I lose track of what day it is. I have had a severe “case of the Mondays” on a Wednesday and have shown up for a badminton Friday night dinner on a Thursday, so flexibility and freedom can have some drawbacks.
As with anything, it’s a matter of balance. If you have no structure, you just wander around randomly, starting and stopping different projects and getting nowhere fast. If there are too many inflexible boundaries, you feel trapped by calendars and to-do lists. Someone I know swears that each day has a specific “feel” to it, but when you live a semi-unplanned life, a random Tuesday can feel like a Friday, and a Monday can feel like a Saturday, especially if you play hookey and go to the beach. It’s odd how the mind works. What makes me think that Wednesday should have a specific feel to it? Is that because, growing up, it was always Prince Spaghetti Day? Who decided Tuesday was for tacos? If I want tacos, shouldn’t I be able to have them on Thursday?
Thankfully, the food police don’t exist (yet, anyway, but let’s not get too complacent in these crazy times), so I can have spaghetti or tacos on any day I choose. Still, I need a better system of keeping up with what happens and when. Technology helps, but there is a theory that says physically writing something down on paper is a better way to remember important information. Plus it’s very satisfying to take that leaf of paper that says “Monday, March 17” and yank it off the desk calendar at the end of the day. For me, it’s like a small victory, “Be gone with you, rainy Monday, and let’s see what Tuesday can do.”
Much like a Wednesday, breaking up the week into two distinct halves and getting us “over the hump,” it takes a combination of a few old-school tricks and a bit of new-age tech to stay on track, but if you find yourself thinking it’s Tuesday when it’s Friday, it’s not the end of the world. Have a taco and a cold drink, and call it good.
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.
