Suddenly It's Thursday.

I know a man who has been retired for almost twenty years. He is 82 years old. Once, when I asked him how he passed the time he declared that you can get really busy doing nothing. He claims that the title of his forthcoming book is: "Suddenly, It's Thursday." Now I know what he meant.

When the only events on your schedule are Doctors appointments and getting the car washed, it is hard to keep track of what day it is. Some driven people never know how it feels to do nothing. To those of us with a low sense of urgency, the unscheduled day is a gift from the heavens.

For those readers who have a job, you can understand what I am saying by remembering your last long vacation at the beach. (Not a long weekend getaway or a traveling tour of the sites in Mozambique. These trips have too many time-sensitive moments and they don't give you time to get into a relaxed mode.)

But, if you recall your best long vacation, you remember that around the beginning of the second week, you really got relaxed. You forgot your job, your meetings, your backbiting co-workers, your clueless boss, your inept subordinates. The vacation day consists of napping, eating, drinking, reading and thinking. You lose track of time, because it doesn't really matter what day it is. A good day depends on the weather, not on the vagaries of the next phone call from your idiot clients.

Well, an extended time not-working has the same effect. You develop certain strategies to promote a nice stress-free existence. You shop for food and go to the dump during weekdays. Working people clog the streets on Saturdays trying to take kids to soccer matches, getting to the mall, rushing to the super market. They need to do everything in one day, so they can relax on Sunday. It's dangerous to be on the roads when these frenetic souls are speeding to their destinations, multitasking with cell phones glued to their ears, yakking instead of paying attention to their driving. Busy, busy, hurry, hurry. Too much anxiety in the streets.

So, what happens is, non-working people tend to let the week drift along. You do whatever you feel like doing. Then, at some point you again notice that your wife has taped a list of honey-do's to the beer refrigerator. Some of the things on the list are left over from previous weeks' lists, and now they have exclamation marks, arrows and highlights. And you realize in the interest of harmony, that you better get some things done.

That's when you realize that suddenly it's Thursday. Again.


A year in Blogville

It was about a year ago that I started this weblog. People who know me have been getting email HH Updates for years, and before the internet I kept a typewritten journal through decades of all the previous jobs. I plan to publish it all in my book about leadership. The working title is "I should have stayed in bed."