Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Most Christian religions see Sunday as a day of rest. The Bible talks of God resting after 6 days of world-creating, and chillin' on day 7.

For the more modern person, though, the whole "day of rest" thing doesn't really work out. I work six days a week, but on day seven I wind up doing all the stuff that I didn't get to do during the week when I was at work or in class.

It wasn't always like this. I have fond memories of being at my parents on a Sunday morning, after going to early mass and eating breakfast, of sitting drinking a second cup of coffee and reading the paper (usually the sales circulars).

But while I still drink coffee and peruse the circulars in my apartment, I also find myself trying to get a ton of stuff done. Stuff like going to the gym, running errands, washing dishes, doing laundry, packing ebay items, writing descriptions of ebay items, and otherwise getting ready for the week.

I also call my parents every Sunday. It's a deal we made when I went away to college - they wouldn't call me, and in exchange I would call them the same time every week. Seven years later, it's still our system - to the point that when I call my parents some other time during the week, the first words out of their mouth are "is everything OK?"

I find myself making lists on Sundays - go to gym, pack ebay, do dishes, take out trash, ect. But I never get everything done. Part of this is the fact that I always seem to put at least one impossible thing on the list, like "clean room" (if you've ever seen my room, you know tha this is impossible even given an unlimited amount of time and one of those roll-off dumpsters they have at construction sites, let alone in part of one Sunday).

But I always think I'll get the rest of the stuff done. But at some point I'll look at the clock and it will say 6 or 7 pm and I'll realize that it's not getting done. I will still have accomplished a lot, but not everything, and I will feel like a failure for that.

I've gotten to the point where I block off time to relax - I try to go outside in the garden on Sunday nights, usually around 7, and read until it gets dark, usually while drinking a beer and smoking a cigar (tonight it was a Clipper City Heavy Seas Ale and a VegaFina natural, which is pretty decent for a machine-made cigar). I'm working on Better Place, Better Lives, a biography of Jack Rouse, the developer who designed many Baltimore landmarks, including the Inner Harbor, where I spent many a college weekend, the city of Columbia, where I've gotten hopelessly lost trying to get a cup of coffee before my grad classes, and The Village of Cross Keys, which I passed every day during the year I lived in Mount Washington.

But despite my hour of forced relaxation, I always feel like I work more on Sunday than any other day. It's not that I'm doing anything difficult, it's just the opposite - instead of doing grand projects or enjoyable activities, I'm doing the most mundane of stuff - taking out the trash, washing the dishes. But they are things that need to get done

Plus, when I get them done, I get to cross somethng off the list...