The countdown starts right from the time I step into office on Monday morning. Flipping through the pages of the desktop calendar and weaving plans, most people wait for it every week like a special day of their life.
Yes, you guessed it right – I am talking about the weekend. In my case, the anticipation of the weekend is more pleasurable than those 2 days themselves.
The Saturday morning alarm rings a little later than on the weekdays but with a frenzied list of domestic or personal to-dos. While some come with developmental benefits like writing this blog, developing a piece of art to adorn one of my walls, most others are necessary evils for survival. A rising middle class family is often sinking in EMIs, credit card bills, fixed deposit declarations and other traditional stuff like electricity bills, internet bills etc. All of these offices are thankfully open on Saturdays latest until 01:00 AM. While there is a clear hesitation in mind to have a regular bread-butter or cornflakes breakfasts but these offices leave me with no other option.
Coming back, the hill of tidying, organizing and laying out tasks almost drown me. I swim back to surface practically only on Monday morning. Ironically, there's no boss for these tasks, no timeframe, no taskmasters around and the only customer to serve is 'I, me, myself' and this one goes berserk if even one of these tasks are not completed. One side of me loves lethargy – I can spend hours admiring the plants in my flowerbed or reading just one article in the newspaper or chatting with my new found 2 and ½ year old friend from my neighbourhood. The other side reprimands me even for sleeping 10 minutes extra on a weekend, for not being able to do anything constructive beyond scrubbing and wiping, for not being able to spend quality time with my better half!
In a nutshell, whatever I do, my mark sheet for the weekend reflects poorly. The nicest thought on a weekday evening is to list down things and push them to the weekend saying to myself "I will be home all day so I will finish it on the weekend." That gives me a feeling that I am being organized and planning out in advance. My subconscious already knows that I am virtually lying to myself and at the same, challenging my overall physical and mental ability. It's like taking sugar free when you are diabetic, ignoring the fact that it will not solve the insulin problem in anyway.
All happiness-led activities like cooking and eating something special (if possible, also feeding some people), reading a book, tending to some plants that have long craved for attention, surfing something useful on Internet or even watching a movie all scream and plead for time. Even the tasks that are outsourced like ironing clothes, basic cleaning by maid, a pipe leakage to be attended or some additional woodwork to be done all need more delivery skills from my end than the service benefits that I enjoy from them. If I were that good with time management, I would have been at a different pinnacle in life. Then………… why I am trying so hard to make my weekend meaningful in the first place??! The customer inside me is so demanding that it doesn't let me sleep in peace from Monday - Friday if I don't accomplish all those tasks over the weekend.
The result is lack of sleep, and physical fatigue on a Monday morning. Anybody may laugh at this – people usually plan weekend getaways. I would rather go out on a weekday evening than spend time shopping in overcrowded malls or markets, queue up at restaurants or spend time on the roads which already scourge my weekdays. Would you call it bad management? Well this is one of the most complex projects that I manage currently which include house maintenance, vehicle maintenance, self development, recreation, guest management, interior decoration, office work leftovers (extended professional commitments) and other activities that lead to sustainable and peaceful existence.
A funny anecdote – If my gas cylinder exhausts in content on a weekday and I don't follow up on a Saturday morning (the booking planning starts from Thursday) then I am likely to be able to cook food only next Saturday. J
