usual

it is monday.

while i don't hate mondays as some are prone to do, they are probably my least favorite day of the week, for the same reason that summer has long been my least favorite season.

long before heat and humidity became my primary reason for wishing summer would go away, there was another reason: i hate that nothing happens as usual during the summer months. things shut down. people go away. things don't go the way that they do during the year.

when i was in school and june would roll around, as exciting as it was to have the incessant demands of teachers go away, i found it equally despairing that i would no longer see my friends every day. since the high school that i attended was in a small town, few students actually lived within walking distance, so most were bussed in... which meant seeing friends became exponentially more difficult.

i like the usual. not that i always choose to participate in it, but i like to know that it is there, happening in all its usualness. i like to know that even though i am on the other side of the country as my family, that they are getting together and having dinner and playing games on Sunday nights.

it's not that i have to participate in it. in all honesty, i'm probably more okay with not participating, but i really do want to know that somewhere out there, it's happening.

it might be kind of selfish, or not make sense at all— this wanting to know that things are going on as they normally do, and yet reserving my own freedom to do whatever unusual or uncommon things that i want... but i've never really claimed to make sense.

which brings us back to mondays. given that most of the pastors take monday as their day off, it leaves mondays feeling far from usual. there is a different feeling when the office is void of half of its usual inhabitants. not bad, just different.

unusual, if you will.