Monday, March 9, 2009

Working on the Weekend

Holla,

When I was still gainfully employed, I would often fall into the cliched cycle of the work week. I would always catch a "case of the Mondays", called Wednesday "Hump Day", and would be elated by Friday. "Everybody's Working for the Weekend" would start to creep into my mind around lunchtime on Friday afternoons. I absolutely cherished and coveted the two days of free time at the end of each week. Saturday and Sunday meant not thinking about work, staying up late, and drinking until my brain and body couldn't function properly by the time the depressing end of the weekend arrived.

This thinking has changed dramatically since I've entered into the unemployment line. I have free time virtually every day. If I really want to sleep until 2 pm, I can (and have). If I am feeling a little under the weather, I am able to play video games all day and gorge myself on peanut butter candy products without having to worry about creating enough billable hours.

This was my life for several months. After years of trying to fit as much in as possible during the week, and relax to an absurd degree on the weekends, I was not entirely clear on how to embrace this new lifestyle. I went overboard on the relaxing portion and was left with a summer of non-accomplishment. This was all well and good until I realized that the stockpile of money that I had when I left my job was dwindling to virtually nothing.

I've started to try and move my life back in the taskmaster direction, but what I've found is that I can no longer follow my formatted lifestyle. I am constantly on-call. If I'm wasting time on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, at the same time that all of working friends are at the beach or watching tv, I start to get a little nervous. I could be sending out emails or trying to further my non-career. In addition, all of the smaller gigs that I've gotten recently, require that I work on these days that were previously held as a hallowed ground of relaxation.

No longer am I working for the weekend. Drinking myself stupid on Friday night, might lead to an unproductive Saturday, which is becoming more and more of a burden to my floundering bank account. My parents told me that one day, I would start to grow up and not need to participate in the binge drinking practices that I learned throughout college. I knew that this would eventually happen, but I thought that I would have children and a home before I crossed this transitional point. Instead I'm playing a cross-dressing waiter in a play on Saturday nights and filming scenes as a spandex-clad superhero on Sunday afternoons.

I wouldn't call what's happening to me as 'growing up'. Maybe my maturity has regressed to my pre-drinking days, when I had entire summers off from a weekly schedule and I lived in a fantasy land of GI Joe's and Mario. I guess that I've regressed to elementary school levels, however I'm earning less money now than I did then. Mowing lawns and emptying dishwashers paid a lot better than acting in community theater. Such is life in the unemployment line, apparently.

-More to come

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