Living for the Weekend

In trying to sort through the usual upsetting mismash of negative thoughts I find myself bombarded by, I have stumbled across one which I feel safe posting up here.

I discovered that I have been living for my days off.

Now, perhaps this is completely normal. I suspect most people with normal jobs and normal schedules watch the clock and count down the hours until the end of the day. And the days until the end of the week. Further, they probably divide up the day into noticable land marks so they can say, at this point, I am 25% finished. I do it all the time...I come in and the first two hours usually go by fairly fast, and I'm counting down the time until my coworker comes in. Then I can take my lunch. If I take my lunch a little later, then I've pushed that 50% landmark back a little farther so I can say upon returning, "Now less than half the day remains."

I am constantly looking forward to the time when I can be released from the burden of my work to the freedom of being at home to pursue my own interests. (The sad thing is, I sometimes view prayer as an impingement on this precious little freedom, and resent it.)

In addition, with the prospect of a job change with the advent of the new school year, I find myself trying to count down the WEEKS until I can leave Swarovski. However, this doesn't feel like a joy or a refuge for me because I am insanely nervous and as of late discouraged about my prospects for this new year.

Here's the problem: In living for those days off and straining for them with my heart, I am missing out on the majority of my time this summer. I am rushing to the end. (I find it amusing how our spirit, our perspective, has such a real impact on our life...my "rushing" has absolutely no objective effect on the passage of time whatsoever. Yet it as real a "rushing" to me as if I were to push a fast forward button on my life. Anyone seen the movie Click?)

If I keep this up, my summer will be gone before I know it, the majority of its lengthly days wasted for the sake of those precious few weekends. The majority of my life wasted for the sake of a little "fun."

I have pondered this problem before. But now it especially disturbs me. In the past months, I have usually not had two consecutive days off. So I would think of myself as only having to endure a 3 or 2 day "week" before I was "free." But now that we have a new manager, she has been scheduling my days off together, thus creating something which resembles a proper weekend. Unfortunately, this "weekend" usually takes place on monday and tuesday. But because of my fears for the future, But now that I have these days off, and the longer week, I am suddenly conscious of the fact that I am living for a mere 2 of the 7 days I have in the week. For those analytical thinkers among you, lets do a little math (This is really for you, Lisa):

There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in 1 week. That equals a total 168 hours in a week. To maintain optimum energy and efficiency, 8 hours of each 24 hours period must be spent asleep. (Attempts to reduce the ratio of waking to sleeping hours appear to work on paper, but everyone knows that 2-3 days of a poor nights sleep causes massive wastage of the waking hours: they are so unpleasant and unproductive that they are worthless.) So, 8 hours from 24 hours leaves 16 hours, or 2/3 (66%) of each day spent awake. That is 112 total waking hours for the week. Of these 112 waking hours, 40 of them are spent working. However, we cannot merely take 40 at face value. Before work, most people require about 1 hour to prepare. Without doing any research, I'm guessing most people are an average of 20 mins to a half-hour commute from their work place. Now, on a good day it takes me about 17 mins to get to work, but all in all I give myself 1.5 hours total prep and transit time before my shift begins. Its a 20 minuite drive home, but factor in the time it takes to clock out, gather my things, walk to my car, and undress and get comfortable at home, its a half an hour. The total time spent at work is 8.5 hours (half hour unpaid lunch.) So, 1.5+8.5+0.5=10.5 hours of my 16 waking hours each day is devoted to work. 10.5 x 5=52.5. 112-52.5=59.5. This means that 46.9 percent of my time awake is given to work. 53.1 percent of my time is "mine." However, factor in that most fun activities achieve maximum joy levels when unconstrained by the mere 5.5 hours left from each 24 hour day, so, the sort of recreation that occurs on the weekend is much more rejuvenating than that during the week. Consider the other demands on one's time like shopping and paying bills and cleaning. So if we place the hours of freedom on a weighted scale and measure the weekend hours alone, we have 16 x 2 = 32, from the 112 total waking hours, which is 28.6 percent of my total time. Therefore, if I live for a mere 28.6 percent of my life, that means a shocking 71.4 percent of my life is wasted. I am living at 28.6 percent efficiency! I am 71.4 percent DEAD! It strikes me that the saints are really the most efficient people, squeezing every oz of life from every minute of fun, work, suffering, prayer, joy, sorrow. They operate at 100% efficiency. In fact, because God is so overabundant with his gifts, His saints overflow with more life than they can contain. They operate at levels HIGHER than 100%. More than they could ever do on their own. 130, 150, 200 percent alive! Or, in the words of Our Lord, "And some seeds fell in good soil, and sprouted, and they yielded much fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundred fold!"

If we consider the deficit of life in the world by inefficient livers like me, then the world desperately needs saints who literally overflow with life for the whole world. How unlike them I am.

I find that when I write these blogs, I often answer my own questions. I expected to end this one with no answer to my question. But here I've found one, made more real to me perhaps by the humor in my mathematical analysis. I still am struggling alot. It strikes me really that I should be disgusted with myself for the spirit which lay behind my time calculations: many many people have far less than 53.1 percent of their time to call "their own." Yes, I am disgusted with myself indeed.

I have much more to say and would love to edit for style and syntax, but I have to go, because I am at work. How ironic...

*sigh*