The year is 2022 CE. Ever since the dawn of (idk) creation? christianity? train schedules? and up until the end of the Common Era, humans have organized days into groups of 7: 5 “weekdays” puncuated by 2 “weekends”. The type of punctuation the weekend is remains hotly debated. The forces at play include a stalwart minority who loudly repeat that the weekEND belongs at the END of the week, period. The windmills they tilt at are the large, dumb populace whom Big Calendar has fooled into believing that weekends, like bookends or Spanish question marks, are split between the beginning and end of the week. The remainder of those who know the days of the week think of the week as beginning on the weekend. Some historians believe this group was just trying to be contrarian, but they seem to have been routinely dismissed or ignored by the others for their ludicrous and unjustified position. (I mean seriously. There’s not even a good punctuation analogy. Colon? maybe).

Who Cares?

I appreciate the engagement, but please raise your hand before speaking. For anyone in the back who didn’t hear, the question was, “Who cares?” It’s an excellent question and one that continues to divide historians, although it’s usually posed more like, “Since weeks are cyclic, why does it matter where you conceptualize one week to end and the next to begin?” I want to reiterate that this is open for debate, but the explanation that makes the most sense to me analogizes days of the week to hours of the day.

Let’s say two people both work 9AM to 5PM, but person A sleeps before work, and person B sleeps directly after work. They’re both working, sleeping, and consuming leisure. They both have the same hours in the day, but they’re organized totally differently. A’s waking hours after work feel like relaxation, a well-earned reward. B’s reward is collapsing into bed. B doesn’t need to recuperate as much during their waking hours, so they can treat it as truer “free” time to be spent however.

The thought is that the same thing holds on the scale of weeks. Free time at the end of a week feels like a reward, to be used for true leisure. Free time at the beginning of the week could be used for leisure or for any other personal priority (no strange sleep schedule necessary!). With this one weird trick (read: Google calendar setting) you could turn all your last minute weekend plans into priorities!