Weakened
by Scott Hardie on August 16, 2006
A friend (new GOO devotee Aaron Weiss) once said he had read about a psychological study that found people don't feel like they've had a weekend if they didn't have free time on Friday night. That was my experience this weekend: At the office till eight, then sitting down with pizza and a DVD only to nod off on the couch by nine thirty. I may have woken up refreshed on Saturday morning, but there was this crushing feeling that the weekend was almost over, that sort of numbing dread you feel every Sunday night an hour before bed. I trudged through the weekend working on various tasks and got plenty done, but it never once felt like a weekend.
And the sad part, besides all of it, is that I took out my frustration on myself. I denied myself fun, forcing myself to work on projects to "make the most of it" as though it was a curse to have free time but not enough of it. When Sunday night came, I kept staying up later and later, refusing to go to bed because I felt "cheated" out of my weekend. I entered enough goos into the site to last through September, but by the time I was done it was time to get up and go to work (I needed a six o'clock start that morning for complicated reasons) so I just got dressed and went. All day long, the office spun on an invisible axis while I waged war with my eyebrows to keep them open, and though I tried to blame myself or promise myself I wouldn't do it again, I couldn't. Why do we take out our frustrations on ourselves and only make things worse?
One Reply to Weakened
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
The Angry Number
Steve Dunn is bemused when people speak out against corporate America, as if it's a bad thing that they give millions of people jobs and create the products & services that enrich our lives. I'm with him, but sometimes I do get tired of being treated like a number. I've been a good tenant at this apartment complex for three years – always paid rent on time, no loud parties or messy pets or maintenance problems. Go »So Long, NCSA Primer
Someone asked me for help learning HTML today. I turned to my trusted traditional source, the good old primer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, but alas, it has finally been removed after all these years. This was one of the major how-to guides in the early years of the web, and it's the very guide that I used to teach myself HTML one weekend in 1996, from which this very site you're reading has since evolved. Go »Game Over
On paper, Game Over doesn't look promising: A vulgar, video-game-themed cartoon series on UPN that only lasted five episodes. But I rented it anyway, and somehow it managed to be entertaining and smarter than it needed to be, but maybe that was just the low expectations kicking in. I think the key to the show is that it actually respected its characters and cared for them as a family unit, instead of using them as empty vessels for punchlines (latter-year The SImpsons) or treating them with unmistakable contempt (Family Guy). Go »I Wonder
Is there any way I can program my car's CD player to make an "om nom nom" sound when I slide in a disc? Go »Summer of Suck
It's been a tough summer so far. Here's venting. - Some good people were laid off in my department. Go »
Jackie Mason | August 17, 2006
[hidden by author request]