Covid vs. Monday
Parisians don’t like Mondays either, at least not the people teaching me the days of the week. I follow three confident, playful French gals online who interview immaculately-dressed (Oh, this old thing?) pedestrians. “What day is it today?” “What day was yesterday?” “What day is tomorrow?” I learned that, like us over here in the work-too-hard-or-die-unhappy country, Paris loves Friday and Saturday, but not Sunday because, “est trop proche du lundi.” (It’s too close to Monday.)
I liked believing we were the only ones over-doing it. It gave me a sense of exit. That somewhere else, my life could still be broken open and joy and rest could be poured in—that I could actually live. But if France is counting down weekdays, my response to getting Covid may be more than just the ploy that is the “American Dream.”
It was a Friday—vendredi—and the tenth day from the onset of symptoms. The virus called down and extended its hotel check-out time to noon: an arbitrary cough, a dab of facial tissue, and this residual guilt that I didn’t get enough done while I was laid out. Laid out with a worldwide, never leave the hospital, shut down schools and businesses, stop all air traffic, order your groceries online, and the U.S. government helping its citizens financially, bomb that still couldn’t destroy my habit of equating my self-worth to work output. The American Routine.
The first time in my life when I’d felt like I wasn’t doing enough was when I’d finished my first book. For three years, I followed Stephen King’s writing schedule he shared in his craft book On Writing. It was what I needed to get it done, but afterward, I discovered I’d become a workaholic. My self-governed, outlier life was now falling for the world’s greatest pyramid scheme. King’s assignment was, “Six days a week, including holidays,” and I’d aced it. I chose to be a substitute teacher so I could inadvertently be a writer who gets paid: for six days a week, I wrote my entire workday when I’d landed a high school gig, junior high when I could find a window, and preschool through elementary, an hour before work. When I didn’t get called in, I wrote for four hours before I started the rest of my day, and another four hours every Saturday. If one can manage nine dollars an hour after taxes, I recommend this job for writers.
It’s been two months since my last blog post and what I’m contending with is shame. Like my deserved break after the book, I’m struggling to accept the break I must have needed during and after I contracted Covid. During, my nose ran so profusely I couldn’t look down, so epically I went through a family-sized box of tissues a day until my grocery store gifted me one. Yet, I resented myself for not organizing my office, not building my calendar for the year, not cleaning two cupboards I’ve been avoiding since I moved in, not meditating, stretching, doing morning pages… Today—mercredi—there is an urgency, a pressure, to “get it together,” “catch up,” and “be productive.” Productive. Product-ive. Outlier and all, I have been unwittingly beguiled again into treating myself and my life as a product. One that must sell to people who have been designated a market. We’re like empty boxes in a warehouse moving down the packaging line waiting to be filled by each other.
No one’s work is done, no to-do list ends, not in Paris, not in Denmark, not even Costa Rica or Ibiza. It’s up to us to put them away, for the day, the month, the year…however long we need.
“Easy French: Days of the Week” (YouTube)