I missed an appointment last week. Becky and I wandered outside after our morning coffee and started clearing some brush and picking up sticks near the house.
I became focused on the success of the yard clean-up. (I was also enjoying the fact that I was finally doing a chore that I had been putting off for some time.) The chore was all that was on my mind. It somehow seemed like I was supposed to be doing that particular job at that particular time. That’s part of the reason I failed to keep the appointment.
In addition, though, I must admit it just didn’t “feel” like a Wednesday. If I had thought about the actual day of the week, pictured the calendar in my mind, I might have realized that something else was scheduled for that day besides my usual mid-week choir practice.
Even a brief consideration of what day it was would have led me to realized, “Hey, it’s Wednesday. Isn’t that the day I get my haircut?” Later in the afternoon, when I finally did think about it, I rushed into the house, checked my calendar and, yep, right there it was: “Hair appointment 10:00 a.m.” I scolded myself, “Not much use in writing down appointments if you don’t occasionally remember to look at your calendar.”
Afterwards, I started thinking about this sensation of how sometimes a day doesn’t “feel” like the day the calendar insists it is. Why is that? How does it happen?
Losing track of the day of the week in which I find myself isn’t a common problem for me, but I must admit it has occurred more often since I have been retired. Although I still have appointments, activities and obligations, my schedule is quite a bit looser than when I was working as a middle school teacher. In that job, I was bound to a fairly rigid schedule. Is the calendar flexibility I now have part of the reason I sometimes can’t “feel” the day of the week?
But even when I was teaching, I would sometimes think, “This doesn’t feel like a (fill in the day.)” That would sometimes happen coming off a holiday. A break in the routine comes along, and it’s like you are living a free day in the sense of no calendar directives. Then the day after the vacation enviably comes which can throw into disarray your normal mental calendar.
It seems to me schedules must have something to do with this psychological experience. We get used to a routine and the expectations that come with it, and then something comes along which alters it. Becky mentioned that when we go on an extended vacation and don’t attend church, she sometimes has the same sensation of losing the “feel” of the calendar day. She makes a good point. These days Sunday church is maybe the only real anchor to our week. (That reminds me of a definition I heard more than once after I left teaching: Retirement is Six Saturdays and one Sunday.)
I know I can’t be the only one who mistakenly “feels” a certain day is not what it is. I have heard others say the same thing. Our minds want the consistency of schedules and at the same time we long for the novelty of the new. That’s such a typical human dilemma. We seem to made of opposites.
The guy who cuts my hair was not upset at my failure to meet my appointment and graciously rescheduled it. We also made my next appointment. I wrote it in my calendar.
