Living for the Weekend
‘Garfield Mentality’ is the mindset of which you find yourself living for the weekend. Where you don’t enjoy your job enough to live for and do it everyday of the week. Where the only possible time you can enjoy your life is 2 of the 7 days a week. We have all seen the cartoon ‘Garfield’, a character who epitomises the hatred for Mondays. ‘Garfield’ has become a symbol for all Monday-hating memes. The ones you see your friends sharing on social media. Because Monday is such a struggle, right? I mean, we all hate it, don’t we?
Not those who do what they love.
The idea that you can only enjoy 2 of your 7 days a week is absurd. That’s less than a 3rd of the week. And this is all because you don’t enjoy your job. Not many people do enjoy their job, and that’s a reality of certain situations that people find themselves in, which is understandable, circumstances change, you may lose your job and have to take up something that you don’t enjoy until you get back on your feet. You need to pay bills, you need to support yourself, or your family. It’s something that has to be done.
What I don’t accept is living for the weekend, when you are in a career that you chose to pursue. If at any stage you aren’t enjoying your career. Something you actively choose to pursue, why don’t you change career. Why don’;t you actively pursue to change your life for the better, to something you will enjoy?
You’re in control of your happiness. Not anyone else.
There is a difference between a job and a career. We all go through spells of jobs we don’t like in the effort to better our overall career and our overall happiness. It’s not that we don’t like our career and what we work at, it’s just that we don’t particularly like the current job we are doing in order to further our career. For instance, you may be a designer at a company giving artwork to create by your art director, this may be a spell that you don’t particularly enjoy. And many of us starting out would give an arm and a leg to be in the situation to create for an art director.
There are 2 things you can do in this situation if you don’t enjoy the job and want to change for the better. If the prospect of becoming that director and working your way up that particular ladder aren’t appealing. If you know that design isn’t your thing anymore;
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Find a new day job.
Actively look for a new day job to pursue, something that you won’t actively hate when you start the week and by the end of the week feel so burnt out that you have no energy to do anything else. Find a day job that you like. Even if it’s not the thing you want to do, ultimately. You need to cover your bills. But not just that, it builds an energy in your that you can use for your other pursuits.
Your day job needs to fill you will creative energy. The same energy you can use to fuel your passion which I will mention in the next point.
Ideally, you shouldn’t have a passion in the same industry or area you are working in. To do so uses the same energy and if you don’t enjoy your job, this depletes you of the energy you need for your passion. You come home feeling deflated and lacking energy, this is breaths disdain for your side passion, and sometimes other things. If your feeling drained and lacking motivation, it can spill into other areas of your life. Come home bursting with energy, wanting to get right into your passion.
It’s also a mentality. Being around new people, people who will inspire you differently, have different effects on your mindset and ultimately drive you to want to better yourself and push yourself into new territory. The benefits of being around the right people are astonishing. And this can start with the people you follow online, and the places you go to; galleries, exhibitions, conventions etc. and can end in a new day job. because sometimes it’s not easy to just change your day job at the flick of a button.
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Find your passion.
This may even come in the form of changing your career entirely. You may have found something you love to do even more than you like your current career. The hardest part is starting. So many people fear the idea of starting something new in bid to find what they enjoy or are good at, because they are afraid that they are going to pick the wrong thing and be stuck with it for a while. The thing is, nobody else bar your immediate family, or spouse has to know you are doing anything. You shouldn’t feel the need to share every aspect with of your life, every decision, every step you take on social media or with friends if you are feeling paranoid about starting something.
Experiment with many different things. Start with an idea, then take action on it. If you like the idea of being a yoga instructor and owning your own business. You have to first enjoy the act of doing yoga, then enjoy the act of teaching yoga, then gain the knowledge of running a yoga business. This can be daunting to think in the long-term, and this is where it puts a lot of people off. Start small, take a few yoga classes to discover if you enjoy the act of doing yoga first. If you don’t then you will realise that you don;t want to pursue, you don’t need to sink a lot of money into it, not much time was lost on it, only a couple of hours of yoga classes in a 1 long period, and you have the knowledge that you don’t enjoy yoga as much as you thought you did in your head. You now have 3 quick wins in a week-long space.
The idea of something isn’t a passion. You have to find fulfilment and satisfaction in the doing of an act.
Have an exploratory phase to allow yourself the time to figure out what it is that you enjoy with your life. This way, you can become excited for the evenings when you get home to actively pursue this thing that you are exploring, in the hopes that you may find a passion in it. The worst that can happen is that you don’t find what you love to do in it, then you can drop it, and move onto the next.
This creates a circle of positivity. Where you are now pursuing something you love in the evenings. Something you love to come home to. Making your evenings more fulfilling and worthwhile.
I see a torrent of personal connections, local businesses, acquaintances and even friends users on social media proclaim how much they hate Monday and can’t wait for the weekend. Think about the opportunities lost if you never try something different, or try to find something you love to do and turn it into a career. Of course we will never know what Facebook friends are doing behind closed doors. But if you want people to know that you are only living for the weekend, at least show others what you are actively pursuing outside of what makes you miserable.
Nobody should be miserable. Everybody has the capability of becoming something great. That requires hardwork, patience, and a bit of foresight. Foresight into what you want to make of yourself, and who you want to be in the future.
‘Present you’ is the only you that can shape ‘future you’.
Bettering yourself is a mindset. Get around people who are going to inspire you. Follow new people online. Go to events where you know similar minded people are going to be at. Consume new kinds content. Try new things, new hobbies. You never know who you might meet by doing these things. An important business connection, or your future partner.
Think about all the things there are to do in the world. Some people have a want to pursue so many things and a will to be great at them, to leave a legacy. So many others are not interested in such, which is understandable, not everybody is willing to work hard for something. But is taking the easy way out and coasting trough your life worth it either? Because next thing you know, you will be old, and realised that you wasted your life coasting through it.
Not to sound morbid, but you will die someday and the sooner you realise this, the more aggressively you will pursue the life you want to live.
So many things to do in this life, but not enough time to be great at them all.
So please, eliminate this mentality of hating Monday, and living for the weekend (unless the thing you love to pursue is only available to you over the weekend, like a football team etc.). find what you want to do and pursue it with no regrets.
Start one thing at a time. Take baby steps. Do what you love.
Disclaimer: When I say ‘living for the weekend’, I mean, doing things that aren’t going to make you grow personally or professionally. ‘Living for the weekend’ is implied in a bad way in the context of this post. As in, going out and partying every weekend, binge watching Netflix, gaming marathons etc.
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