What's Next?

Thursday 3PM, a three-day weekend lingers in the air. Is all I have to do is finish this one more note and I am out of here. A job well done, indicated by the work time being completely filled and me admitting that there wasn’t anything else I COULD do. Leaving work knowing you did the best you could and that you deserve a long-weekend is more satisfying to me than a vacation after a weekend. At least this one I feel I earned.

Friday comes, it is full of activity with the family.

Saturday passes nicely reminding me of life outside of work.  

Sunday is a little dreary as now a work week lingers instead of the weekend before. In fact, I had already started to anticipate the work week on Saturday when I was enjoying my reading time.

Monday morning, I am crawling out of bed, justifying the sacrifice to work out. Justifying a mood of positivity by appreciating all I have. A skill that is very difficult to work on when you are so tired and it’s dark outside.

The week starts and I am off to the races. Clients, discussions, notes, all things I don’t mind. Actually, there isn’t anything I do on its own that I actually mind. Yet, somehow I look to the weekend as the savior at the end of a work week. What makes the weekend so much better than working? Besides the idea of the weekend being better because there is no “obligation” to meet a quota, what is it that I am exactly looking forward to? What is it that I am supposed to feel during the week?

I’ve heard about crappy Mondays my entire life, so maybe there is some influence as to what work actually is and how I think I am supposed to feel about it. Is that influential enough to cause this made-up turmoil about the work week? Also, due to the mostly-unstructured weekends and in many cases eating too much or too little and being more active than any work day, are the weekends better? The one argument I can say for the weekend is that my wife and daughter are both typically home with me and this time is much appreciated. However, I will tell you that if we were home together longer than even a 3-day weekend, things start to get a little sloppy. All three of us looking to get back into a routine and stimuli from other people. It doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the time together, it just means that we DO appreciate it because of the work week.

In other words, the work week is what reminds me of what I work for. Without work I would be a spoiled, bratty adult with no convictions, no sacrifice, no forced-interactions with people that I otherwise might not encounter. I would be all the worst parts of myself wrapped up into a bundle at home while my wife and daughter would inevitably be the source of my newfound problems.

Would they even be around one might ask. After all, one of the qualities my wife appreciated about me was my work ethic and desire to help people. Though even now I do not know if I qualify for either of these qualities, she will most definitely know I am neither one if I am at home. Would I be a scholar of the books, filling my time with words, or would I start playing video games and eating Cheetos waiting for the darkness of sleep to end my day?

Luckily, I do not play the lotto and am not aware of any rich relatives leaving me any money, so me without work is not a real possibility. What is real however is my perspective on life and where I choose to live.

The other night, my wife had a “thing" to go to. (Don’t focus on the “thing”) She was gone and I was fortunate enough to pick my daughter up from daycare early. I mean the fortunate part initially. I am always weary of this expectation due to her now 2-year-old moods. Yes, she is a sassy one. “I don’t want to,” her new favorite phrase. When I pick her up, she is fine, but a few hours with just daddy after an entire day of activity at daycare and only a 20-minute nap and she was irritable. As I was trying to console her for the 12th time due to nothing happening but a breeze the wrong way, I realized that I was starting to think in the future. My mind wandered to the next morning when I would wake up early and do some writing (something, believe it or not, I love to do).

Here is the next critical step and what prevents missing those critical parenting moments. I stopped the thought, no matter how much pleasure this expectation was providing and an alternative to the reality of a whiny child, and instead I appreciated something about my daughter. I appreciated us. Before anyone throws up due to my “perfect” parenting skills, I want to reinforce the difficulty of being appreciate of my time being mindful, especially at this particular moment. I was frustrated and was having a hard time finding the pure “joy” I assumed I would get the next morning, but I did it. I brought the mind back to the present, the here and now, and dedicated the energy I was hoping for the future and gave it to a child I hadn’t tried any structured activities yet. She loves getting on the back, or when we look for her baby’s bottle, or despite the cold, we go outside. All things I decided to try.

What I learned, if nobody else did, was that the hope of tomorrow or the weekend or next year can sometimes trump living now. We have these tendencies reinforced within us that things will be better when…. And then the moment happens and we constantly look to the next moment, the next high, the next promotion, the next meal, whatever. When we constantly look forward we never see where we are at. Yes, that last line seemed a bit cliché, but I don’t have a better one right now, and now is where I am living.

God Bless.