Rainy Days And Mondays

I love Mondays so much, I am considering coming into work on Sundays and calling it pre-Monday, just so that I can get more Monday into the week.

Monday mornings make up one fourteenth of your life. It took all of my available mathematical acumen to bring you that groundbreaker. But think about it. That’s a lot of time to squander away with over-used platitudes, reinforcing the idea that Monday morning is akin to plunging one’s head repeatedly into a bucket of mammalian offal.

After working as a freelancer for years, I returned, eight years ago, to the traditional workforce and encountered a social narrative that promotes the following two precepts:

1. The period between 5pm on a Friday afternoon and 9am on a Monday morning – we will refer to this as ‘freedom’ – is the brief interlude into which we compress all things that represent pleasure, free will and the pursuit of happiness

2. The hours from 9am on Monday morning until 5pm on Friday afternoon – we will refer to this period as ‘the working week’ – are an exercise in endurance, through which we accrue enough good karma and financial remuneration to earn our brief encounters with ‘freedom’

Monday morning is the faithless tyrant that drags us from our Sunday sanctuary, like innocent children wrenched from slumber to endure a six-hour car ordeal to Grandpa’s house, where we must earnestly attempt to appear charming and not at all furious about the gross injustice of it all.

Tuesday slips under the radar, largely because we are distracted by the euphoria of no longer being in the barbarous grip of Monday. Wednesday is joyfully celebrated as the summit of a merciless ascent, from which we can glimpse blessed Friday, gateway to the green pastures of the weekend.

I spent the first few months of my employment dodging the Monday morning gauntlet of well-meaning office small talk, the staple of workplace social intercourse. I was determined not to be drawn into a dominant narrative, at odds with my philosophy of finding adventure in the everyday:

“How was your weekend?”
“Not long enough.”
“I know, it never is, right?”
“Oh, well. Only five days to go”

 AAGH!! Will it only be a matter of time before I’m reciting the same robotic dialogue, like a character from a B-grade dystopia? I can’t hold out forever, so I’m mounting a campaign of rejection right now. NO, Karen Carpenter, rainy days and Mondays do not always get me down. I happen to like my job and I am not opposed to the occasional precipitation, which brings untold joy to all the lovely flowers in my garden. Let us rise up against this social malaise, which stifles the creativity of the proletariat, rendering us slaves to the dollar and marionettes to the ruling-class puppeteers. I love Mondays so much, I am considering coming into work on Sundays and calling it pre-Monday, just so that I can get more Monday into the week. Who’s with me??? …Are you with me?? …Hello?