Weekends
In her role as the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith once delivered the memorable and oft-quoted line, “what is a week-end?” Her character is genuinely confused about what the word weekend means because the British aristocracy didn’t work. For the highest ranked people, it was actually very embarrassing and improper to earn an income by doing a job - owning land that other people worked and your steward managed was the right way to ‘make a living.’
Some Downton Abbey viewers related to Maggie Smith’s line despite existing in an extremely different context. “What is a week-end” was meme-able because many people these days work so hard or so often that they feel like they hardly know what a weekend is. I would argue that in the US, it’s actually very embarrassing and improper to not be constantly working. How often we work, how hard we work, and what we do for work all come loaded with value judgements that reflect negatively or positively on who we are as people.
There’s a lot of layers here that I could delve into more: the idea of the Puritan work ethic, the myth of American meritocracy, the way that necessary but unpaid caregiving work is left out of our economic models.
But I started writing this issue of the newsletter with much less lofty (and more navel-gaze-y) goals. I just wanted to talk about how it’s Wednesday and I’m looking forward to the weekend. I wanted to talk about my own work situation and how, although I’m only working part-time and I don’t particularly like my job, it does provide structure to my days. That structure was sorely missing earlier this year and left every day of the week feeling similar… and not great.
I’m better able to enjoy my weekends now that they are more thoroughly differentiated from my weekdays. Now, I just need to find a job that helps me enjoy my weekdays a bit more.