The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul
The following quote is from "Life, the Universe and Everything", a work of one of my favourite authors, Douglas Adams:
"In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in about 2.55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers that you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul."
I find that I feel a similar way about Sunday evenings; it has rapidly become my least favourite night of the week. Usually by this point I've had a busy weekend, I'm tired and not particularly motivated to do anything productive. Often I feel it would be nice to hear from someone, it would be particularly nice to receive a phone call from a friend or something, but that usually doesn't happen. Now, you might say, "why don't you call up someone?", and my answer is that one gets tired of always having to initiate such conversations.
Perhaps I'm feeling it this weekend in particular, having spent the last several days with several hundred other people, at Feast; the weekend was sometimes exhausting, but enjoyable and encouraging. In general though, I don't usually get a lot of chance to socialize during the week, so the end of that period can be a bit depressing. Also, when I don't have much else to occupy my attention, I tend to become introspective. Sometimes too much thinking is bad for you.
I try not to indulge in self pity overly much, nor am I hard done by. There's just something about Sunday evenings, when I have a week of work ahead and many things to get done in the evenings, that leaves me feeling somewhat despondent.
"In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in about 2.55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers that you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul."
I find that I feel a similar way about Sunday evenings; it has rapidly become my least favourite night of the week. Usually by this point I've had a busy weekend, I'm tired and not particularly motivated to do anything productive. Often I feel it would be nice to hear from someone, it would be particularly nice to receive a phone call from a friend or something, but that usually doesn't happen. Now, you might say, "why don't you call up someone?", and my answer is that one gets tired of always having to initiate such conversations.
Perhaps I'm feeling it this weekend in particular, having spent the last several days with several hundred other people, at Feast; the weekend was sometimes exhausting, but enjoyable and encouraging. In general though, I don't usually get a lot of chance to socialize during the week, so the end of that period can be a bit depressing. Also, when I don't have much else to occupy my attention, I tend to become introspective. Sometimes too much thinking is bad for you.
I try not to indulge in self pity overly much, nor am I hard done by. There's just something about Sunday evenings, when I have a week of work ahead and many things to get done in the evenings, that leaves me feeling somewhat despondent.
posted by Matt at 10:39 p.m.
1 Comments:
I love that Douglas Adams quote. Because I know too well that point when "you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day." I think I'm there now. (Running tally of the day: one shower, one bath. It's as many as I allow myself in one day.)
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