Lost Weekends

Personally, I find the weekend begins at 4pm on Friday, when I get out of work, and ends at the same time on Sunday, when the day becomes like any other, waiting for the next day rolls around. It's the 48 hours the Clash sang about on their first album: "Short space of time and a heavy scene/Monday is coming like a jail on wheels".

A friend of mine made a perceptive observation last week, when the topic of weekends came up. She said that having spent most of Monday to Friday looking forward to it, it can never live up to the expectation. Certainly true in my case, having spent many a time feeling I should be doing something with the freedom I have, but usually end up staying in bed till noon on Saturday and Sunday.

Of course, there's always the football to get me out of the flat for a few hours but even that is starting to lose it's ability to get me through the week. The obvious conclusion is that I, as with everyone I would imagine, need some kind of purpose and motivation.

It seems to be a modern problem, this. Someone at work was banging on about a "course" she attended a few weeks ago and was urging others to go to some forum they hold. I won't mention the name (you never know who's reading) but some investigation led me to the conclusion it's one of those quasi-cults that essentially take hundreds of pounds off you under the guise of "helping you achieve your goals and ambitions".

Not my scene at all, especially as part of the whole course seems to be when the leader hurls abuse at you in some vague form of reverse psychology that would be more likely to lead me to smack them round the chops. Yet I imagine that in the modern world, where concepts of god and church no longer mean much to a large part of the population, people are looking elsewhere for their spiritual fulfillment.

Having never been one to follow anyone, or be a leader myself, I can't help but feel I'm at a very important junction in my life. I try to tell myself it's a big world, and that there's something out there. Then I worry I'm too cynical/lazy/easily bored to actually get up off my arse and start looking. Ah, the troubles of 21st century man.