Men and The Goddess

In the “way old days” well before I retired from the corporate world I loved Fridays, not because they were the day before the weekend but because they were “casual Fridays.” Remember that? We could come to work without a jacket and tie. There were still rules: no jeans, shirts with collars, no canvas shoes…we had to look decent. And if we had customers visiting it was most certainly back to the uniform: jacket, tie, shoe-laces…

Then we moved into “flex-time” when we could work longer days and take every other Friday off. Those were the days for play! I loved these Fridays; Rosemary and I would have breakfast together at our favorite little breakfast/lunch shop, we’d catch up with each other and our lives, we’d do some planning and just be casual with one-another. There were still Fridays when travel took me out of town. There were still customer visits that had to be made if they were available on my Friday off. But those free Fridays – what a gift! Three-day weekends that were somehow better than Monday holiday weekends; it was almost like playing hooky – other people still had to work!

Now that I am retired from all the corporate “rules” – no matter how much they “flexed” there were still ways to dress and time-sheets to complete – Fridays are still precious days. Is my sense of a more relaxed day a holdover from my corporate experience? Is there still some excitement surrounding the last day of the week? For one thing Rosemary’s weekly Ezine is published and out; we finish that task on Thursday nights, complete the video, format the email, update the website. Some Thursdays grow into long days and late nights; glitches do have a way to slow the publishing process.

But here it is; the Ezine is out, it’s Friday morning and all I have to do is finish this post. Then I can do with this day whatever comes to mind; whatever opportunity pops up. It’s no longer “casual Friday” or “Friday off” but “Eclectic Friday” for me! And these Fridays are more precious to me than they ever were when the corporate dress-code relaxed and the work schedules relaxed.

But I wonder if we’ve become too relaxed. I just had a conversation with some friends about “jeans to the opera.” I have a fabulous, although now they may be out of style, collection of ties hanging, forgotten, in my closet. I do wear a western-style bolo tie occasionally when I want to feel (or appear) as a Coloradan. But even weddings, funerals, theater, have become the domain for sweats! And the styles seem to reflect this overly relaxed attitude – worn-out jeans, ripped shirts, shoes with missing laces! Or are the attitudes a response to the styles?

Yesterday I wrote about the societal aspects of “connection.” I firmly believe that the human species is a collective creature; we survive because we are social beings; we evolve in community, learning from one-another and growing together. Does it matter how we appear to one-another? Does our style, our manner, our attitude, our demeanor, our appearance matter within the community?

I’m not sure I can even answer these questions for myself. But I do know I love Fridays; and this Friday I am free to be eclectic!

Have a fabulous weekend!