Happy Days

My entire life has been dictated by weekly points of interest. While this matter of fact has not changed, it has been vaguely altered as of late.

From age 2 until 21 I was in school. Monday was the beginning, and Friday was the end. In the space between these bookmarks, were lessons learned and works accomplished. The weekend was, is, and always will be the elusive two-day marathon of fun, imagination, and unfulfilled aspirations that just doesn't manage to fit in with those other five days. Throughout the college experience, the weeks and weekends oftentimes became entangled in a lush labyrinth that could only be deciphered successfully through a use of extreme organization and power of the will. When my schooling was said to be done and finished, I was told it was time to enter the working world. Upon entering this "world", I was not surprised to see that weekly life reverted back to the way it was in early childhood (minus the every-other-weekend shuffle that so many children of divorce grow accustomed to), where the weekend meant absolute freedom.

Fast forward 6 months to my current and very temporary life of unemployment, travel, and leisure. There is a lyric that comes to mind when mulling this over, it goes: "Funny thing about weekends when you're unemployed. They don't mean quite so much." (Primus, "Spaghetti Western"). Not true. Well kind of. If I were still at home this would most likely be a spot on observation. However, I am not at home, and the weekends still hold a mysticism I can't quite put a finger on. They are the days in which I feel no guilt over wasted time, and there is always something to look forward to. At this point, I would imagine some of you are thinking to yourselves "well hey, isn't Ellery just living one giant weekend right now?" The answer to this question can be found in the inviting patch of gray which lies between the realms of maybe and probably. After some brief reflection upon my experience, I have concluded that it requires the effort and skill of any part-time job in keeping myself entertained meaningless day after meaningless day. A part-time job is no vacation, and being a somewhat disputed veteran of such occupations, from what I've understood, scheduling is integral to the whole.

As I was attempting to compare my weekly routine with those of my working friends, I realized that I have developed a unique weekly schedule of my own. Thanks to the power of the internet and modern satellite communication, the makeup of my weeks can now be directly associated with three specific television broadcasts back home. Curb Your Enthusiasm is certainly (in my worthless yet very knowledgeable opinion) the best show on television (maybe ever). It airs back home on Sunday nights, making it available for my viewing via the internet on Monday. In close second to Curb is South Park. Where Curb is consistently on top of its game, South Park tends to be hit and miss from week to week (granted this is all just over the past 8 or so weeks). It airs Wednesday evening, making it available for me on... you guessed it, Thursday! To wrap it all up, and if you didn't already assume, my Sundays are consumed by big sweaty oversized men in helmets and pads smashing into each other purely for my enjoyment, never ending glory, and multimillion dollar checks in their names. So the new, improved, and what is sure to be immensely short-lived weekly breakdown goes like this: Monday is still Monday, Thursday is the new Friday, and Sunday is, well, also still Sunday.

Not quite the work-for-the-weekend mentality down here. Just something I realized today that I found amusing.