Earlier, When I worked with one of the Big 4 companies, I lived my life from one weekend to another. What happened in the interim is really not worth discussing. Thank goodness, it was a 5-day working thing.
So every Monday morning, I would motivate myself with "Friday is just 4 days away". There was some thing magical about Friday evenings; Even if I knew I had to work over the weekend, Friday evening was like my Fairy God Mother! So much promise!!!
I would feel exceptionally optimistic the whole day. Post 4 pm, my brain would slowly start wrapping up for the day. One by one the PPT and EXCEL sheets would be closed and private messages to friends and colleagues would increase with "Kya plan weekend ka :-)"
And by 5.30, I'd only be waiting for it to be 6, when I could fly out of the door and walk straight into 2 days of freedom. No looking back .... Especially at that one Manager who had the perfect recipe to spoil a well planned weekend with truckloads of work.
And those lovely lovely plans that I'd make for the weekend ...... Ah ... I will sleep a lot, I will clean my cupboard, I will watch too much TV, I'll eat oily fried feel-good food, I'll meet my parents, I'll play poker, I'll go the parlour, I will go shopping, Heck!! I'll even go on a healthy walk around the garden! Yes!! Feeling pumped, I'd head home with a brighter than ever smile on every Friday evening! Please note that all these plans were for Saturday and Sunday. Because, Friday evening was to just ... Be :-)
Come Saturday morning, the sheer optimism of these plans would hit me. Sab kuch to nahi ho paayega! So then I'd start rationalizing them. The constant sufferers of the rationalization were cupboard cleaning and the healthy walk. They have to wait till the elusive 'next weekend'.
I'd somehow manage to cram most of the other plans quite satisfactorily over the whole of Saturday and half of Sunday. And then, just as the Fairy God Mother would regularly introduce me to weekends on Friday, the Devil Incarnate would introduce me to the prospect of a Monday being just a few hours away, on the Sunday evening.
Now, If there was any thing I found more terrifying than a Monday morning, it was Sunday late evening. I can't explain it - but it would me so sad, that I would just sit and waste it over gloomy thoughts for the whole of the coming week. Shit yaar, bohot kaam hai... xyz report bhejni hai, abc proposal banaani hai, oh nooo, tax documents bhi submit karne hai, blah blah blah and more such blah. It would take the optimism out of me. I'd be filled with philosophical thoughts like why do we have to work if we aren't happy, we should only do things that make us happy. Sometimes I'd even try to convince the hubby that we don't need to run in the race like this and we should just retire and be happy with whatever we have or may be open a grocery store in a small town and sit at the cash counter and be lazy! (Yeah - I find the stressful grocery store idea very contrary to that for some reason!) Sigh!
I thought, this would all change when I decided to give up the big moolah-making, peace-defying job I had. I settled for some thing much more relaxing; free-lancing! It gave me a lot of time on hand. I met my parents more often, caught up with friends that I hadn't seen for a very long time, slept a lot, took up new hobbies and basically had a very nice time........ Till, the weekend bug caught up with me again.
Now, my weekends are intertwined with my hubby's weekends! So I go through the same emotions that I did earlier from the wonderful Friday, to the euphoric Saturday, to the upsetting Sunday evening and the ever manic Monday.
That's when I realized, that unless, we have a job that we are passionate about or we do some thing that impacts or affects people's lives positively, we will only be running from one Friday evening to the next. We seem to find our mundane jobs so dissatisfying and below our creative ability, that we don't find happiness in those 5 days at work. We seek more from the weekend than it can offer. But had we found an area in our lives that helped us make a wonderful difference to the world (and also got paid well for it), I think we'd be sorted!!
And here's a BIG CLAP to all those who do, in fact, find even Monday till Friday just as endearing as the Friday till Sunday journey :-) May your tribe increase :-)
So as I wind up the post, backed with my trademark Sunday evening mighty philosophy, Cheers...!! Till we meet again on some Happy Friday evening :-) :-)
