Did You Spend Memorial Day At Work?

Here’s how I spent my Memorial Day:

In the morning, I did a super-extra-long Getting Things Done processing system, which is to say that I completed a bunch of outstanding administrative tasks and then cleaned out a lot of physical paper and trashed a lot of MacBook files.

In the afternoon, I wrote 3,708 words for two of my clients. (Took just under six hours.)

I did not barbecue, watch Mad Max: Fury Road, or buy anything — even though Old Navy kept sending me countdown emails letting me know how many hours were left on their Memorial Day Sale.

How about you? Did you work on Memorial Day? If you had the day off, did you still work through Memorial Day, maybe by completing a bunch of outstanding administrative tasks? (Don’t forget about shadow work!)

I always feel a little disgruntled on holidays like these; a lot of us have the day off, but just as many of us work right through the day, and it leaves you with the sensation of something skipped over — especially if you consider that it’ll be a full year before you get the chance to go to a Memorial Day barbecue again. (Admittedly, when you put it like that, it’s ridiculous; a barbecue isn’t any more special because it’s on Memorial Day, and being disappointed that you didn’t get to eat bratwurst and enjoy yourself on a day designated to remember fallen military servicemembers is even more ridiculous.)

But every time I work through a holiday, I think “there is something about my life that isn’t quite correct, otherwise I’d also be doing this socially designated thing on the day that everyone else is doing it.”

Which is, of course, immediately followed by “but a lot of us are working today; everyone at Old Navy is working today, the people at the coffee shop where I wrote 1,069 of those words are working today, maybe the incorrect part is the idea that if we’re not spending today out enjoying ourselves, something is wrong with us.”

So: who here worked on Memorial Day? How do you feel about it? Does it make it even weirder to think that Memorial Day was originally designed to be, at least on some level, a day of reflection and remembrance?

Also, Old Navy just emailed me that their Summer Sale starts today, so even though I missed their Memorial Day Sale, I still have the chance to save!

Photo credit: Phil Gwinn

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