While most American calendars start the week on a Sunday, I prefer a Monday start—Mondays create a crisp start—they have a clean left edge.

Sunday is too soft and lazy to really commit to getting anything going. Plus, starting the week on a Monday keeps the weekend together—a Sunday start reduces the weekend to pre-Monday and post-Friday. A Monday start allows the week to fall into a double-thick mattress.

I need the weekend as next week is a hard fall through 2021 in miniature.

Monday: September through December. Revisit and summarize the fall term by grading summative assignments and giving final grades. By this afternoon, I will have revisited pretty much everything my students and I did and did not do in the last 4 months.

Tuesday: June through August. Tackle deferred maintenance. The list of house projects we did not get to this summer but still want to do this year receive manic attention during winter break. If I didn’t get deep cleaning, room and furniture painting, and small-scale house renovations done during the four months I was not working in the summer, surely I can find a way to get them done now.

But I’m sure I’ll get my nails done.

Wednesday: March, April, May. Spring finds me reconsidering my options. This is always the time of year when I question whether I will choose to teach again in the next semester. I should find out on Wednesday whether or not I am moving forward in the dean process. That information will tell me if I will teach again at all.

And I am getting a massage.

Thursday: January and February. In my philosophy of the week, Thursdays are days of culmination—anything that’s going to get done this work week needs to get done on Thursday. So this Thursday I will look at my goals for 2021 and check a few off as completed, cross a couple through as never going to happen, and move more than a couple and more than a few forward to 2022.

If it’s going to get done in 2021, it has to get done by Thursday.

Then there is Christmas Eve, and Christmas, and enjoying what we got at Christmas, and getting what we didn’t get at Christmas, and cleaning up from Christmas. Then it’s New Year’s Eve….

2022 starts with a weekend—a soft start to a triple-thick and springy 2022. May it break our fall.