Ah, the three-day weekend. That most cherished of social rituals; that glorious occasion where the free time we’ve managed to secure for ourselves at the end of the work week (thanks, labor movement!) is expanded by fifty percent, making it a length that’s actually feasible for tackling major projects. As someone who claims to be a writer (of things other than blog posts, at any rate), but whose time has been eaten up by the demands of work and the stresses of the Quarantimes, these seventy two hours should be a godsend. At last, a chance for me to set aside the cares of my day job, turn to one of the writing projects in the proverbial queue, and actually get something done!
Except – for all intents and purposes (except, you know, my annual income), I have two full time jobs. Now that the Tuesdays at Nine reading series is being conducted remotely (at least until we all get our vaccines), the prep work for it is all done remotely as well. That means reading and chosing scripts, planning casting, and reaching out to writers and actors. Week after week. So, along with doing laundry (I can multitask), that accounted for my Saturday.
One day down. Two to go.
Which is fine, except for one thing. Now that we actually can get our vaccines, those of us who qualify have to navigate a byzantine system of interlocking websites to actually secure an appointment. We have to track when new vaccine shipments become available, and when the websites update, and the time spent doing so works out to yet another full-time job. Here in New York, another round of appointments became available on Sunday; I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say that making plans for a month from now consumed my time and concentration for the day.
So that’s two days of the three day weekend gone, with only Monday left. Twenty four hours.
Which, once you factor out sleep, and meals, and errands, results in – eight hours available for any sort of creative project? Maybe ten? And once I’ve gotten all of the prep work out of the way, my long and glorious three=day weekend will have been whittled down to…three hours, perhaps, of actual writing?
I’d like to think I can some measure of progress in that brief time, but I’ll try not to beat myself up too badly if I don’t. After all, if worse comes to worse, I can always get that writing done over the next long weekend I have, which is…
-checks calendar-
…um, at the end of March.
Sigh.