Mondays

Usually when I sit down to write a blog entry I have some entertaining or whimsical idea in my head that I bat around on the screen and tease out a few paragraphs that I find interesting. In that respect, my blog is entirely selfish: I write what I like and what I find interesting, not what other people want to read. (I do, however, make some concessions. I changed the URL so I could have actual “readers.”) But today is Monday morning, which leaves me completely and utterly devoid of any reason or intelligence. Monday is a truly terrible phenomenon.

All across America people wake up and smack their alarm clocks across the room as they realize with horror they have a whole week ahead of them. I suppose my current Monday’s aren’t too bad. They were ugly when the clock read 4:45 AM in high school, especially since I rarely got to bed before 10:30 PM. Last year I got up at 5:00 AM to be at work by 6:00 for my early morning shift at the warehouse. If it is medically unadvisable to operate heavy machinery while taking medication that can make you drowsy, it is doubly dangerous to operate a 4-ton forklift at 6:00 AM while trying to rub the sleep out of your eyes. The summer before that I worked a 9-5:30 shift at the same warehouse. Those Mondays were okay for me, but with 40 hung-over coworkers the general experience was still unpleasant. They would rush out the door on Friday afternoons to catch happy hour and drag themselves in on Monday mornings, looking like they had gotten run over by a Mack truck.

Now my Mondays consist of me waking up and wondering what that unholy noise is and why is it ringing so loud. Once I come to my senses I turn the alarm off and roll out of bed by sheer habit, because no combination of willpower or effort could get me out of bed feeling like I do. I stumble to the bathroom and turn the light on and instantly regret it. As the florescent lights stab my pupils I wonder why I didn’t remember to cover my eyes first before I turned the lights on, but I wonder this every morning and I still don’t remember the next day. It’s usually about this point that some of my higher thought functions start coughing and starting like a cold engine. I remind myself never to start drinking, because if I’m this bad without the alcohol I’d die with a hangover. Fortunately, habit takes over once again and I continue through my routine. I get in the shower and wonder why the water takes so long to get to a decent temperature. Then, just about the time that the water gets really good and warm, I get out and wonder who’s idea it was to put an air conditioning vent right above the shower. Midway through shaving I have resigned myself to another day of being conscious, even if I don’t like it.

I sat down to ramble through a worthless Monday morning blog entry, but I’m actually rather entertained by what I just spit out. Perhaps the utter despair of Monday mornings has some potentially productive power to it. Maybe some great masterpieces were painted on Monday mornings. Like Edvard Munch’s The Scream.