Trenchwork

Sorry, folks; I’ve been buried.

There are Mondays, and then there are Mondays.  And they’re not always on Mondays.

You knew that, didn’t you?

There are days when you leave the house four times before you actually leave.  You walk out the door, then realize you left something and have to go back.  Your keys, your lunch, your jacket, your briefcase, that pile of student essays, your watch, or just that you forgot to turn off the lights.  All in separate trips.

Or, you drive halfway to work and then remember you were supposed to return the key to the local elementary school that morning, so turn around and drive back to the school, park, and then find you left the key at home—at which point you drive back home to get the key to return to the school before you can go to work.  If you feel a bit like you got caught in a slightly drunk version of “this is the house that Jack built,” you’d be about right.

Or, you send out a quick informational mail to a group of colleagues, and then find that you made a mistake.  So you correct the mistake and send a new round of mails to those involved to tell them to ignore the first mail and use this new information instead.  You lean back, mentally clear your head to tackle the next task and then realize the fix you just sent out had a mistake in it.  So, you sent another round of mails, apologizing for the previous mails, and giving the new, now corrected fix.  About 90 seconds after you press that infamous “send” button, you realize that you forgot to address an underlying problem, and all your fixes are now irrelevant—and you’ve just managed to send three incorrect mails to a group of people who by now are certainly convinced you’re either totally incompetent or going senile.  When you make those kinds of mistakes for yourself, you can just shake your head at your own temporary stupidity.  When you involve other people, though, well . . .   That’s when you send a last mail for the day telling them to ignore ALL communications from you until the next business day, because somewhere between now and then you’ll find those missing grey cells and will get the information and arrangements correct.  Really you will.  But not today.  Not on a Monday, and who cares that it’s actually Thursday.

It’s just a Monday.

I know I’m not the only one who has those kinds of days.  In the past couple of weeks, I’ve run into a number of folks who’ve had Mondays of their own.  Misery may love company, but it really is reassuring to find that the rest of the planet has those moments.  It seems to happen to all of us when we get tired, or are a little too busy trying to remember a few too many things.  Something has to drop out along the way.

Personally, I reckon that it’s ok if I forget my lunch on the kitchen table as long as I walk out without having forgotten an essential piece of clothing.  And if for some reason I show up at work in slippers, I’m hoping the lovely bunch of colleagues I work with will just chalk it up to it being a Monday—regardless of what day it is.

But just in case, I have a pair of clogs in the office.