| Life is best measured in weeks for me. They are the most applicable increment of time measurement I've found so far. Individual days don't mark too much apart from their brothers, each one seeming mere hours apart yet feeling like years, depending on where you have to wait in line. Months gauge enough metabolic and chemical shifts as it is that using them for anything more than reminders for bills just gets pushed back in the junk drawer of my subconscious. Years are more historical hash marks that are dictated by the media and the decline of my own physical prowess.
So much can happen between their calendar squares, and they carry this tinge of hope at their entries and finales, a grand opera of weekends and hump days. The modern world as a whole accepts them as the markers of progress, of addiction and neglect, of hedonism and deadlines. Despite the lengthening shifts and rise in number of home based and cyberspace businesses, everyone is working for the weekend, shooting for the light at the end of a Friday afternoon, pressing for the days they may get to sleep in. Each day is a step closer to the week's demise, each new morning a chance to make this week better than the last, or at least, start off on the better foot.
I strive to get that Monday rolling smoothly so that the snowball theory of the week falling in line behind this day may once more be applied, whether it fails at the end of the equation or not. This Monday went that way, though the one two weeks prior did not. I was determined to have my Monday start correctly and so had to prepare the night before, like any decent member on the debate team. I turned off my computer at midnight (which is obviously a few hours shy of its typical pause, regardless of the day) said farewell to my IM buddy, packed my gym bag for the morning, took out the contacts and set both alarms for 5am. I sprung from my nightly 4 hour sleep, which is almost as predictable as a toaster, lugged my day's burden down the stairs and tottered out into still dark and misty streets to the gym. I showered and changed into clothing choice #2, grabbed a #2 breakfast meal and loaded my dinky Festiva with its 2 week allowance of a $10 fill up (don't you love it when you get to benefit from when they made economy cars?), and even made it to work 15 minutes early, 7:15. I changed again into my tomboy apparel of navy Dickies and Ford T-Shirt, called in my supplements, updated my customers, worked at training my trainee and all the other tedious labor involved in working at the office of a body shop ]in the suburbs]. I even managed to get my nails refilled (acrylic, so I won't have bloody stumps while I try to quit smoking, one of those other hopeful things I started on a Monday, two weeks ago) and download some must have mp3's before getting back at the apartment at a usual 6:30 p.m.
Despite my long weekdays and short sleep pattern, I have a hard time getting to bed early. I've tried it a few times, but my body always seems to think that 4 hours is all I need. I've laid my head down at 10:30 and ended up wide awake at 3a.m., wondering what I can do until the alarm blares on at 5. Being a minor net head, I'm usually online for a fair 4 hours a night, hours of which usually stay in the shallow end of the night. I borrowed some movies to keep the net addiction at bay, to no avail. By the time it was all over, I wasn't able to conk out until 2:30, knowing that a perfect Tuesday would not be possible. I set high my hopes, as well as the alarms' volume, and tried to not think about it. At 8:30, my eyes popped open, and I stared down my hallway to see the unusual brightness of an oncoming day, a brightness I should have been witnessing for a full hour already from the air-conditioned comfort of my beige cell. I called in and made it there for 9, having missed my gym date and at least three voicemails, and pretty much have given up on this week already.
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