Or should I say LIGHT AT THE END OF A LONG DARK TUNNEL?

Michael received a COVID vaccine this week. The two of us have been scouring websites to get him on a list to be vaccinated and we were reaching a panic point. His school is resuming all in-person classes on the twenty second. This pandemic has been harder on him mentally because he was pretty sure that if he contracted the virus, he would die. The day after his vaccination, he started talking about living his life again. I’m still waiting, but happily waiting with the knowledge that Michael can relax a little. I’ve put my name on every list and maybe, hopefully, by April I will also have been vaccinated.

Then we’re going to party like it’s 1999.

Except with masks if around people who have not been vaccinated.

Lately, my weeks have started out just fine and dandy. Until Tuesdays. I don’t know what it is about Tuesday. Usually Monday is everyone’s arch nemesis, but mine is Tuesday. If I am home on Tuesdays, the day stretches out into the longest day. There are added minutes between regular minutes and even sticking to some sort of normalish routine does nothing to shorten the time. Dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen cabinets, an hour (sometimes more than an hour) on my yoga mat, walking the dog, answering work emails, troubleshooting the problems I can troubleshoot through remote desktop, eating. All of those things takes up seconds of the added minutes in between the minutes. If I am in the office on Tuesdays, I seem to be so piled under the mountain of samples I need to image for a particular project that by the time I head home, I cannot see and my right eye is twitching. Even then, I can be found at my home desk, remotely accessing the microscope to transfer data or on a workstation to process that data until bedtime. It is not uncommon to walk past my open computer at home and see fluorescent images of planaria flashing across my screen while it is being processed through a macro.

My friend Sarah who is dealing with work and virtual school (her littlest, most mighty one is in virtual kindergarten) confessed to me recently that Tuesdays were her hardest days too. I can remember when the dreaded week day was Wednesday. Wednesday, smacked down in the middle of the work week, was the day that was going to determine if you were going to finish the week victorious or battered and bruised. When you woke up on a Wednesday, you thought if you can just make it through this day, everything would be smooth sailing for the rest of the week. Well, for me, Tuesday is the new Wednesday and I have decided to full on embrace it. I know now that Tuesdays are the days where I need to be kinder to myself. Maybe even lower my expectations for that day. Tuesdays are days for setting firm limits on attempting to fill up all of the time or when to stop working.

Who knows if Tuesdays are going to remain being my hardest day once I return to an ‘in office’ every day work schedule. The lesson learned here is that there are going to be days of the week that challenge the fuck out of you. The key is to finding ways to make that challenge work in your favor. Claim it. Own it. Beat the day back with a chair and a whip, but also know when to cry “UNCLE!” and give yourself a rest.

There is always gratitude in lessons learned.