Sunday Football, Monday Quarterback= Sunday Depression, Monday Insomnia

The older I get, the more I have come to realize how un-American my life is. For starters, I am a zealously single female with no intention of breeding and an addiction to working tirelessly for little or no pay. Even worse, I do not have TV, own a car, or drink soft drinks.

But let's not go too far. I am, after all, an American of Midwestern origin, and upon more thought, there are some very American features to my life: I have no health insurance, little savings, high debt, and a dog. An onlooker—if there are any onlookers on my life-- might also add that I share a certain American trait of a Puritanical sexual hypocrisy/ flip-flopping (blog forthcoming).

However, the most American trait of my life is a new and rather alarming development: I spend my entire week making elaborate plans for the weekend. I have long been curious and envious of "normal" people who do this. You know—the ones with jobs that start in the morning and end just before dinner time, and who do recreational, non-work related things outside that bracket of time? To me, they've always seemed a little nutty. But I see people like secretaries, bankers, advertising executives, even in-house attorneys make post-work social plans... during the week! As if that's not enough, then I overhear them talk about their weekend plans. Wow. The day trips, the outdoor-sy things, double dates, baby play dates, Korean spa dates, basketball games, rock climbing and related Chelsea Piers itineraries. It's mind blowing!

Let me explain. See, my usual instinct is to work— work work work. And if there is no work, think up some new work. If that fails, go somewhere where you know some work-related people will be; maybe this will turn into new work! But something happened six months ago. I finished one work project and found myself staring at the wall on a Friday night. It must have been such a state of mind that inspired the Peggy Lee classic "Is that all there is?"

I won't tell you what I did next, but suffice it to say I started a retail shopping spree which culminated with some $100 spent on fishnets... and even more on non-face or hair-related beauty. And in there, somewhere, I started planning up my weekend like a motherfucker.

Like all those normal people that I'd been so long bewildered by, on Tuesday afternoon I started planning... Plans for movie-catching, restaurant trying, voyeuristic event hopping, kitschy (and then some) parties, peppered by a mish mash of cleaning, odd money gigs, and a general nod to the month's schmooze quota. I'm uncertain as to the origins of this phenomena of weekend-planning, but my guess is that it's a short fall from the hell of cubicles to an obsession with romantic time-blocking.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a kink in the wiring. For the past 7 weeks, a new pattern has emerged: Sunday night depression, followed by Monday night insomnia. From what I'm told, the Sunday Night Depression is, in fact, a Normal Trait of American living. After a two day reprieve, one must look over the edge into the abyss of the upcoming five day grind. To me, it's more that even after all that planning, it's still… well… it's all still somewhere else. There may be no there there, but I'm not so sure there's a here here, either. On cue: Is this all there is?

Maybe Sunday depression exists because the weekend holds such wonderous promise of the future, like someone you've only met in email. Yet on Sunday around 6pm, a problem always bubbles up and lingers in your face. A leftover family squabble, some mysteriously alienating moment with a lover, or the general knowledge that plans are just dreams, only well organized. I don't know. But I do know that on Sunday nights, I feel sad. Which means that Monday morning I awake with such ferocious purposefulness that I cannot sleep Monday night. I simply cannot come down. The little head goes into overdrive and wants to embark on every idea that has ever occurred and attack every last thing on the To-Do-List-- even the items that have been floating sadly on the bottom of it since fall 2002. The world will be taken on, NOW.

It is Monday night, late, and I have already had two cappucinos and lots of Nicorette. There will be no sleep tonight, but plenty of blogging, emailing, other non-essential writing and crossing out of lists. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I will start planning for the weekend.