A huge and melodramatic problem of mine has always been giving in to the time of day, the day of the week, the time of year and/or the general aura of whatever state of mind everyone else had seemed to have allowed themselves to also fall into. 3PM? Starting to bonk. Solution? Starbucks and $4.25 later. 7PM? Mindlessness. Click on the TBS Seinfeld rerun to hopefully shift your aloneness to an American connectivity. Today, for instance, is obviously a Monday. Maybe 1/5 of my office either called in sick or simply didn't show (despite darling Bruce, the English gent who publicly escaped away to London for the week to enjoy the homeland (jealous is my soul)), and the majority of us remainders fell into the gray and gloomy slump of the appropriate outside overcast weather and cloud that loomed over this Monday. So did I, truthfully. Who cares if a day is fully wasted? I admittedly enjoy making myself almost purposefully miserable sometimes. I like (or I at least sometimes think that I like) falling into a funk every now and then...and perhaps more often than conventional...to give myself a declared excuse to isolate and screen my phone calls and even tangible connections. But why do it? Why not push to make things better?
I strangely hate working. I love and hate it all at the same time. Mostly, I naively hate working when it feels like work, ie., the idea that waking up and getting ready during the two hours before your punch-in of the time clock hits is irrationally infinitely worse than the workday itself, yet it all meshes into the necessity of it all. What can be done to enjoy this thing, this absolutely terribly important thing that happens day-to-day that constitutes your life? Make it interesting. Spontaneous. Give a day something different that it doesn't deserve by typical Monday standards.
Today, I pushed my lunch hour back to about as far as my empty stomach could stomach so I would have a significantly shorter afternoon to work than my morning hours endured. I was productive but not overly, conversational but not enthusiastically. Yet a surprise was given to me once 6:20 came along and I stepped in my door. It wasn't particularly earned or needed (as I thought) but who wouldn't take an ordinary day and make it something more, if it didn't ask for any of the effort?
A savory and nothing less than a delicious smell of risotto being tenderly stirred over the stove with an incorporated and sensational blend of garlic, red and white wines and pumpkin aromas lingering over the heat in unbalanced proportions nearly made me go weak at my heels upon entry of my foyer. I'm handed a glass of Pinot. No questions asked, just a greeting. What could be more acceptable than acceptance? And no explanations? My cocker spaniel chews on the tail of my cat. There's love in my home without any sign of it, and yet, it's so definitively there because of the pure and simple un-enforcement of such a feeling. It's natural, imperfect, and thus...pretty damned good. Great. More than the earlier parts of the day would have allowed on your own.
The Delmonico is sliced, fresh parsley is chopped and blended into the parmesan creaminess of the rich risotto and more wine is poured. We all eat quickly, of course. Why sit and stew over a meal that is too fantastically tasty to hold yourself back from and eat daintily whist enjoying every individual ingredient and flavor? Yes, this is a sporadic and truly enjoyable evening, but it is Monday after all, and we are all still human (myself being unfaltering the most flawed out of them all) and have to eat up before...well, something else commands our attention.
It's all good. Very good. From out of the dress clothes and in to the... hah, well...the absolute crap clothes that are so very lost of their elasticity but too full of comfort and nostalgia to ever toss into the hands of the Rescue Mission and that you can't help but reach for when you want to put on something in your downtime when there is no one there for you to impress. A great meal on a cool night approaching the Fall, and all the reason in the world to sigh in contemplation and in delight for the season to come has been mine. Thank you, family. Who cares if it's Monday and dinner along with the evening hours should be convenient? You loved ones proved me wrong. Gladly. It is becoming more evident to me that a goal of mine is to blend each day into one: to not look forward to Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but to see each day as a mini-playground that is to be explored and made fun as a day of living, just for the hours that it consists of, and not it's place in its seven-day schedule. I'm not saying every day should be great and spontaneous and spent doing something 112% out of the ordinary so you are sure to enjoy life. Hell, I'm usually too cynical and not in the mood enough to do that. But why not try a little? Would that kind of work be so bad? I don't think so. Look at how it served me today.
Make a Monday good; make yourself good.
D.C.
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