The working week

A bleak post ^[1]about Tuesday, that most persistent and terrible of all days:

So, Tuesday, we meet again. Tuesday and I have met often and no good has ever come of it.

I am beyond Tuesday’s power, for I haven’t had steady work since last March, when I finally left minimum wage office jobs for the paradise that is TEFL (Teaching English to Johnny Foreigner). The paradise consists largely of being fired, getting a new job, then finding there’s almost no work so one may as well be unemployed; then, inevitably, borrowing yet more money from friends and relatives, and finally dying in a snow drift in the north of Germany; and then being eaten by wolves and crows.

However, I well recall the horror that is Tuesday. Five years of minimum wage ofice jobs, and 12 years of school, have left their mark. Each day has its particular quality, as follows:

Monday: long dreaded but more fearsome in expectation than reality. I go into work on about 3 hours’ sleep, having shifted to nocturnal patterns over the weekend; as a result, I can’t really concentrate on anything, and after lunch I enter another reality, hallucinate, drink too much green tea, dance like Leland Palmer ^[2], and attend to ancestral voices. Time passes quickly.

Tuesday: the worst day of the week. I got through Monday by the tried and tested tactic of entering the Dreaming, also I expected Monday to be tough. Monday exhausts all my determination, leaving me horribly vulnerable on Tuesday. Tuesday is just like Monday except I’ve slept properly, so I have to endure it without benefit of hallucinations. There’s also four days left before the weekend — no man can possibly endure four days. Tuesday is like you’ve done a few rounds with Tyson at his peak, survived, then — just when you’re taking a deep breath and counting your cracked bones, congratulating yourself on being just barely alive — you have to do a few more with Joe Frazier, at his peak. No, Tuesday will not do.

Wednesday: hope begins to stir. Against all expectation I am still alive. I fought Tyson (Monday), then The Man made me fight Frazier (Tuesday). I should be dead but instead I find myself waking up and not feeling too bad, not as hellish as usual. Furthermore, I am now half-way through the week; I have broken the back of the working week — there is hope. I may yet see the end. Wednesday is where the human spirit shows its mettle.

Thursday: nearly Friday, nearly free. I make a prison-style record of my remaining hours and tick each off. There is still much to endure and I may well be killed at the last moment, indeed it seems highly probable that just when I am making joyous Tarzan noises and thumbing my nose at my bosses and openly eating flapjacks like Steve McQueen, an errant shell will hit my office and destroy me completely, and my flapjacks. But still, it’s nearly Friday.

Friday: It cannot be. It is. I have somehow defeated The Man — once more, I have taken nearly five days of bullying and tedium, and still I draw breath. Careful, old chap, don’t get too haughty or you may be brought low by Nemesis. The anxiety peaks round about 3 pm, when the end is so nearly in sight, but there is still ample time for humiliation and death. Finally I hit 5 pm and weep aloud — I am so amazed to still be alive, I almost can’t enjoy it. As I walk to the bus stop, I feel the full horror of the week settle on me, and know I will have to get very drunk tonight, and watch a war film.

Already I am dreading Monday.