What Day Is It Anyway?

I have one of those jobs that requires working lots of extra hours. Long days are not at all unusual. It comes with the territory.

But my long days have been too many in a row now. I've worked at least part of every weekend for the past month. Last weekend, I only worked a few hours on Sunday and even fewer on Saturday. But it was enough to make me feel like I worked both days. The weekend before, I worked more than a full day each day. The weekend before, the same. The weekend before that was more partial - like this past weekend.

The problem with working over the weekends is not only that you don't get a break. It's also that you don't get to reset your week. Most of us - certainly those of us who work a traditional five-day workweek, i.e., not retail - have a sort of internal clock. The weekends reset that clock. The weekends tell us when Monday will come around again. The weekends follow Fridays.

So when I work during a weekend, or as has been the case much too often lately through the weekend, my clock doesn't get reset. And the days start running together. And it becomes hard for me to automatically recall the day of the week. Instead, I have to think about it. Hard.

Not happy.