i keep dancin on my own

neekaisweird:

I understand that we all have to contribute. We have to get up and do something — school, work, drug dealing — more days than not so that the cogs of civilization can continue to turn. And yes, it makes sense that there is one day that, generally speaking, kicks off the “contribution” period of our weeks. There has to be some beginning to those five days, and it just happens to be Monday. But the way in which this unassuming little day has, by and large, ruined so much of what’s awesome about existence is pretty astounding. Though there will always be the yin and the yang of work and play, Monday must be universally reviled on principle.

There are so many things about being an adult that suck from which children are generally excused. Kids don’t pay taxes, they don’t have to parallel park, they don’t have to pick people up from the airport super early in the morning. And yet, even for the most innocent kindergartener, the cruel mistress that is Monday is a pain from which they are not exempt. They, too, have to go from a weekend jacked up on cartoons and Nesquik to the daily grind of homework, quizzes, and that one kid in class who asks the teacher if there is any homework thirty seconds before the bell rings. They have learned to hate at such a young age. And perhaps it’s a good thing, perhaps the utter dread that settles like a fine mist on Sunday evening as they pack their bookbags and finish the homework they put off is preparing them for the reality of life. But I can’t help but feel that children should be free ofsome horrors.

It should be said that that dread, that Sunday night malaise, it has frankly begun devouring Sunday in its entirety. There is a certain degree to which you can’t fully enjoy Sunday, because even as early as brunch, you’re acutely aware that tomorrow is going to be filled with commuting, with projects, with meetings, and with people you don’t want to deal with. The only time that really remains pure, weekend-speaking, is Friday night. You know that even tomorrow, when you wake up with a throbbing hangover, there is a whole day and night of absolute freedom. There is a buffer before Monday. How unfortunate that weekends are unable to reach their maximum relaxation potential with the oppressive cloud of the work week looming over it.

And even if you love your job, your classes, your coworkers — Monday is still an enormous hassle. Yes, there are going to be many times when you enjoy what you’re doing throughout the week, or feel fulfilled by the work you’re doing. But to know that five days of straight obligation await you, with no option to say, “Yeah, no, I think I’m going to retreat from society for a week-ish” is pretty brutal. That’s what’s truly unfortunate about Monday, and what it represents in life — the concept that we have responsibilities, whatever they may be, and we only get two days of respite from constantly being told what to do. In middle school, even going on a field trip or knowing you’re watching a movie in class that week couldn’t take the edge off of getting up that first day after the weekend. Sure, it would probably be awesome when you got there, but beds are never more comfortable nor TV shows more watchable than on Monday mornings. It is a day that, if we had our way, would be spent hanging out in pajamas and watching movies — Sunday version 2.0.

But perhaps the worst part of all is the enormous tools who rub in your face just how refreshed, energized, and motivated they are on Mondays. They bound into school or work with an air about them that says, “I got more sleep than you and ate Greek yogurt with homemade granola in the morning, please punch me in the face.” There should be some sort of law that, even if you just found out you won the lottery on Sunday night and Jay Z asked you if you wanted to do a song with him and ride around on one of his yachts, you still have to be melancholy the next morning. Our collective hatred of starting the week is directly proportional to how much Steve next to us is talking about how awesome he feels after the bike ride he went on at 6 AM. We all have to work together.

So it’s pretty certain that Mondays are always going to plague humanity with their demands of productivity and participation, and we may never build complex enough robots to make the work week obsolete, though I’m holding out hope that I’ll see it in my lifetime. However, in the meantime, we can always start the week of with a special breakfast, a decent night’s sleep, and maybe a little cocaine to take the edge off.

Or we could just add some more three-day weekends to the calendar. Those are God’s gift to humanity for discovering fire.

freneticthoughts:

excuse-my-charisma:

Dear Class of 2011,

As you begin your college experience, I thought I’d leave you with the things that, in retrospect, I think are important as you navigate the next four years. I hope that some of them are helpful.

Here goes…

1. Your friends will change a lot over the next four years. Let them.
2. Call someone you love back home a few times a week, even if just for a few minutes.
3. In college more than ever before, songs will attach themselves to memories. Every month or two, make a mix cd, mp3 folder, whatever - just make sure you keep copies of these songs. Ten years out, they’ll be as effective as a journal in taking you back to your favorite moments.
4. Take naps in the middle of the afternoon with reckless abandon.
5. Adjust your schedule around when you are most productive and creative. If you’re nocturnal and do your best work late at night, embrace that. It may be the only time in your life when you can.
6. If you write your best papers the night before they are due, don’t let people tell you that you “should be more organized” or that you “should plan better.” Different things work for different people. Personally, I worked best under pressure - so I always procrastinated… and always kicked ass (which annoyed my friends to no end). ;-) Use the freedom that comes with not having grades first semester to experiment and see what works best for you.
7. At least a few times in your college career, do something fun and irresponsible when you should be studying. The night before my freshman year psych final, my roommate somehow scored front row seats to the Indigo Girls at a venue 2 hours away. I didn’t do so well on the final, but I haven’t thought about psych since 1993. I’ve thought about the experience of going to that show (with the guy who is now my son’s godfather) at least once a month ever since.
8. Become friends with your favorite professors. Recognize that they can learn from you too - in fact, that’s part of the reason they chose to be professors.
9. Carve out an hour every single day to be alone. (Sleeping doesn’t count.)
10. Go on dates. Don’t feel like every date has to turn into a relationship.
11. Don’t date someone your roommate has been in a relationship with.
12. When your friends’ parents visit, include them. You’ll get free food, etc., and you’ll help them to feel like they’re cool, hangin’ with the hip college kids.
13. In the first month of college, send a hand-written letter to someone who made college possible for you and describe your adventures thus far. It will mean a lot to him/her now, and it will mean a lot to you in ten years when he/she shows it to you.
14. Embrace the differences between you and your classmates. Always be asking yourself, “what can I learn from this person?” More of your education will come from this than from any classroom.
15. All-nighters are entirely overrated.
16. For those of you who have come to college in a long-distance relationship with someone from high school: despite what many will tell you, it can work. The key is to not let your relationship interfere with your college experience. If you don’t want to date anyone else, that’s totally fine! What’s not fine, however, is missing out on a lot of defining experiences because you’re on the phone with your boyfriend/girlfriend for three hours every day.
17. Working things out between friends is best done in person, not over email. (IM does not count as “in person.”) Often someone’s facial expressions will tell you more than his/her words.
18. Take risks.
19. Don’t be afraid of (or excited by) the co-ed bathrooms. The thrill is over in about 2 seconds.
20. Wednesday is the middle of the week; therefore on wednesday night the week is more than half over. You should celebrate accordingly. (It makes thursday and friday a lot more fun.)
21. Welcome failure into your lives. It’s how we grow. What matters is not that you failed, but that you recovered.
22. Take some classes that have nothing to do with your major(s), purely for the fun of it.
23. It’s important to think about the future, but it’s more important to be present in the now. You won’t get the most out of college if you think of it as a stepping stone.
24. When you’re living on a college campus with 400 things going on every second of every day, watching TV is pretty much a waste of your time and a waste of your parents’ money. If you’re going to watch, watch with friends so at least you can call it a “valuable social experience.”
25. Don’t be afraid to fall in love. When it happens, don’t take it for granted. Celebrate it, but don’t let it define your college experience.
26. Much of the time you once had for pleasure reading is going to disappear. Keep a list of the books you would have read had you had the time, so that you can start reading them when you graduate.
27. Things that seem like the end of the world really do become funny with a little time and distance. Knowing this, forget the embarassment and skip to the good part.
28. Every once in awhile, there will come an especially powerful moment when you can actually feel that an experience has changed who you are. Embrace these, even if they are painful.
29. No matter what your political or religious beliefs, be open-minded. You’re going to be challenged over the next four years in ways you can’t imagine, across all fronts. You can’t learn if you’re closed off.
30. If you need to get a job, find something that you actually enjoy. Just because it’s work doesn’t mean it has to suck.
31. Don’t always lead. It’s good to follow sometimes.
32. Take a lot of pictures. One of my major regrets in life is that I didn’t take more pictures in college. My excuse was the cost of film and processing. Digital cameras are cheap and you have plenty of hard drive space, so you have no excuse.
33. Your health and safety are more important than anything.
34. Ask for help. Often.
35. Half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at any given moment. Way more than half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at some point in the next four years. Get used to it.
36. In ten years very few of you will look as good as you do right now, so secretly revel in how hot you are before it’s too late.
37. In the long run, where you go to college doesn’t matter as much as what you do with the opportunities you’re given there. The MIT name on your resume won’t mean much if that’s the only thing on your resume. As a student here, you will have access to a variety of unique opportunities that no one else will ever have - don’t waste them.
38. On the flip side, don’t try to do everything. Balance = well-being.
39. Make perspective a priority. If you’re too close to something to have good perspective, rely on your friends to help you.
40. Eat badly sometimes. It’s the last time in your life when you can do this without feeling guilty about it.
41. Make a complete ass of yourself at least once, preferably more. It builds character.
42. Wash your sheets more than once a year. Trust me on this one.
43. If you are in a relationship and none of your friends want to hang out with you and your significant other, pay attention. They usually know better than you do.
44. Don’t be afraid of the weird pizza topping combinations that your new friend from across the country loves. Some of the truly awful ones actually taste pretty good. Expand your horizons.
45. Explore the campus thoroughly. Don’t get caught.
46. Life is too short to stick with a course of study that you’re no longer excited about. Switch, even if it complicates things.
47. Tattoos are permanent. Be very certain.
48. Don’t make fun of prefrosh. That was you like 2 hours ago.
49. Enjoy every second of the next four years. It is impossible to describe how quickly they pass.

This is the only time in your lives when your only real responsibility is to learn. Try to remember how lucky you are every day.

Be yourself. Create. Inspire, and be inspired. Grow. Laugh. Learn. Love.
Welcome to some of the best years of your lives.

13. In the first month of college, send a hand-written letter to someone who made college possible for you and describe your adventures thus far. It will mean a lot to him/her now, and it will mean a lot to you in ten years when he/she shows it to you.

I did something similar to this. I surprised my mom at work my first weekend coming home since I moved away for college, and when she left the office for the weekend I snuck back into her office and wrote a note on her whiteboard about thankful I was she made me leave and how I much I loved it and appreciated her for it. She still, a year and a half later, has that note on her whiteboard and just writes her work notes around it, and she took a picture of it and has it framed on her night stand. Seriously, she loved it. Do something like this because they WILL appreciate it. 

Reblogging for future reference