Have a great weekend.

I'm physically limited to 30-minute segments of writing. Turns out that when I sit and write for longer than that, my neck muscles get tired. This discomfort is my body's way of saying, "hey, get up, this head is too heavy to hold over the desk, move it back!"

Thirty minutes on, five minute break, then thirty minutes on again.

This is just another insult added to the injury of the inverse pulses of diminishing time and expanding limits. Just for the record, I'm not great with limits. They seem to come up at the most inconvenient times.

Today I'm thinking about Friday, when I appear to encounter the most resistance to limits. A lifetime of clocking into first the playground, then the school house and then the water cooler - the accepted program of "modern" life - a dance inherent with inequity and unnecessary tension?

If you think about it, there is no actual difference at all between the moments that begin Monday and the ones that commence Friday. Yet I'm so thoroughly programmed to the weekly clock that the words evoke completely different feelings. We even have a special prayer for the experience. T.G.I.F. anyone?

That's why writing about limits is logically a better topic for Monday than Friday.

But Friday is when the resistance comes up. (Resistance to limits could have been my middle name but there wasn't enough space on the birth certificate, so they went with Ann instead.)

Resisting the culturally accepted delusion of work time isn't easy. The whole monkey show is organized around this dance of days. I suppose it is more efficient to have everyone agree that Wednesday is the middle of the week rather than just letting each person decided what makes the most sense.

First of all, why seven days? And why'd we agree to working five or six and only having one left to ourselves? Where's the creativity in that? Not to mention all the things that are competing for the short end of the stick and in living terms are probably more important.

Apparently we agreed the whole thing centuries ago and who's going to question the Sumerians? "The only thing we seem to know for certain about the origin of the 7-day week is that we know nothing for certain." It seemed like a good idea at the time.

So, probably just to be certain that Louis the cheese maker would be around when we stopped in to buy some cheddar, we agreed to participate five or six days in the marketplace and reserve one day for gratitude and rest.

And in exchange Louis agreed to the deal to secure somewhere to tend his cows, eat left overs and keep track of his kid's growing pile of toys.

We've made some adjustments to the original terms since actually Louis worked way more hours every day than was healthy. When we invented the machinery of mass production, we needed to schedule work a bit more closely. And were led into the land of labor laws by our cousins across the pond. Thank the British.

Having glanced at the link, turns out that the 40 hour work week was a great relief! A gift!

Thank god we don't have to work all day and night.  But before you get too excited, read between the lines a little.

It turns out it's more expensive to replace trained workers who burn out at their stations, so breaking the work up into shifts was introduced. The machines can run around the clock and monkeys could survive if limits were imposed on their time in exchange for the guarantee of life long benefits.

We agreed to trading our lives for one day of rest to maximize productivity? Our reward a far off paradise called retirement? (Which I've checked out. It ain't pretty. There are a ton of old people and it's uncomfortably close to the nursing home.)

Is it any wonder as we're approaching the end of our weekly shift, the transition to "free" time approaches, and the resistance builds.

Inherent in our acceptance of this schedule is the agreement that one day is enough. Work six, rest one. (Anyone not working on Saturday? Think about it.) Get up and do it again.

And this realization, for one brief moment, comes washing in on the wave of relief at the conclusion of another hectic, maybe even brutal week.

I've agreed to exchange the entirety of my adult life for one day of rejuvenation per week?

On what planet does that make sense?


Maybe it isn't Friday that I'm resisting. Maybe it's the whole deal.

I'll have Sunday to rest up but right now I'm thinking I'll boycott Monday.

Have a great weekend and try not to think about it.