Here's how your day starts.
You get to sleep in (on a workday) and you're not going to work. It's a rare "day off" and you opt to take advantage of it and do absolutely nothing! You even convince yourself that that is your goal, to do absolutely NOTHING!
This is a good plan for you! You need this. It is healthy to simply let your body and mind rest and relax. As a people we have gotten so far away from relaxing.
"Way back when, people relaxed all the time" you tell yourself. "They didn't have all the stresses and stimulation that we have. They knew how to relax!"
And that's true. People didn't have to work a 9 to 5, 5 days a week way back when. They didn't have to worry about school REALLY REALLY way back when when there was not so much to the world. It was a simpler time. They didn't have the stresses of their neighbors having better stuff than them or their kids having a better education. They didn't have to worry about paying bills.... They had it easy back then.
So there you go, you're going to relax from your day to day job that anyone else, with the right education and / or experience, can do. But you have more experience and you just don't feel appreciated, so dammit! DAY OFF!
You wake up from your night of peaceful slumber ready to tackle your much deserved day of nothing.
You turn on the television.
You scroll through the guide because that's the only way you know hot to find something on TV what with all the overwhelming stress inducing channels we have today, that we have to pay for (I might add).
You see the movie The Right Stuff is on and you think to yourself "Awesome! I love this movie!" So you watch. "Wow, these guys are ten years younger than me" you think to yourself. "Wow, they're really risking everything" you keep thinking. "Wow, I got that paper cut at work the other day..." you change the channel.
Saving Private Ryan is on. "Wow.... I had an altercation with a co-worker the other day.... that was a bad day" you think to yourself trying to find a conflict comparable to the Normandy Invasion. "Huh, these guys are like 15 years younger than me..." you consider pouring yourself some bourbon at 9 am. "Man, what an awful way to die" you think about how many paper cuts it would take to feel that bad.
"Okay, but these are people from the modern age... they have the stresses of modern problems..." You turn on the History Channel.
The narrator reads "the black plague killed millions" you change to the other History channel. "These people lived off the land" he reads and you think to yourself how simple and how nice and "RELAXING" that would be. "They risked death at every turn, scrounging for food all day and all night every day, just to survive. And those who were not nomadic formed an agricultural society farming and raising livestock" the bastard narrator reads on....
"Huh.... well this sucks" you can't help but think to yourself.
Yup, the world has become like stress espresso when you think about it. What used to be stretched out each day, over the course of a week, every week, every month of every year we now cram into Monday through Friday if we can. We get more time to relax than anyone before us and more than some of us even now.
There are people out there who work every day of the week non-stop to make our world better. Offhand I can think of a few careers that guarantee no rest. You know like farmers, the military (mostly those deployed) and cruise ship workers just to name a few! It's non-stop for them all.
So, you think about all of this and almost feel very guilty about your day. I say "almost" because, you really do need this time and people throughout time always have needed this time. Why don't you just wipe away that guilt by doing some laundry, walking the dog and going to the grocery store, you know, to "scrounge for food!" Besides, you need milk.
Ironically, I'd kill to make the espresso a little bit stronger and only have to work four days a week!
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