Friday, August 20, 2010

Everybody's working for it

For years there was not an appreciable difference in mood between my weeks and my weekends.  Other than my daily destinations -- office versus leisure centers -- I lived a very similar lifestyle no matter what day came up on the calendar.  People who looked forward with rabid longing to the weekend, I regarded with bemusement.

Then I started the No-S Diet.  Now I'm one of those woo-hoo weekend!!!1!! people I never understood before.

On the weekends I drink the diet soda that I love (and deny myself the rest of the week).  On weekends I have dessert.  It's not that I'm miserable during the week, when I drink unsweetened tea and refuse sweets.  I don't feel an appreciable sense of deprivation or sacrifice.  But oh, how I look forward to that first sip of Diet Coke and that first bite of chocolate.

The weekend now represents the opportunity to indulge myself.  And I think that the difference between weekdays and weekends provides a pleasing contrast.  Life should include tension and release, work and play, ordinary and special, workaday and indulgence.  I find the movement between the two, mapped onto time in the distinction between weekday and weekend, exhilarating in a small, regular way.  Those sips, those tastes, now are more precious and consequently more savored.  The same is true of the time in which they are permissible.

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