“That’s why Monday flares up like an oil-slick,
when it sees me up close, with the face of a jailbird,
or squeaks like a broken-down wheel as it goes,
stepping hot-blooded into the night.”
Pablo Neruda was not a fan of Mondays. While this isn’t my favorite translation of the violent passage from his poem, Walking Around, it does capture the anger and lust of the day. It encompasses that feeling that Monday is a different kind of beast–an awakening of sorts or perhaps a descent into madness. Though I lacked the potent command of words with which to express my disdain. Monday was long a pressure filled arrival that brought disappointment and the realization of my own shortcomings. I tried to alter that trajectory recently by erasing Monday as a workday. This fall I’m rebranding Mondays as no-class Monday and turning the day into a time where I can fall slowly into the work week and patiently develop the fortitude with which to deal with the horrors of midweek.
Midweek is the new boogey monster then. It is that space between awkward beginnings and long-awaited ends where everything seems its furthest point from completion. Of course, I suppose I will rebrand that at some point too, learning to look forward to every day as a new possibility as opposed to some dark beast slouching towards me waiting to be born.
Some Thoughts:
- For better than 4 decades I’ve been less than an organized human. I suppose it can happen if I really work at it, but I don’t know exactly what is going to work for me or be comfortable. It is largely a habit of mind, and what I have been doing has not worked or made me a better version of myself in any way. If anything it has continuously held me back. I gotta get better at this.