I want to be a cat!

This is satirical…

My home is graced by the presence of a cat. When I'm bored, I sometimes observe them and reflect on her behaviour. I sometimes wonder what it's like to be her. I can't help but feel jealousy…

Cats are so lucky, they get to sleep up to 16 hours a day. I would love to get 16 hours, but I have work and do other nonsense, I'm lucky if I get 8. Plus, some nonsense science malarkey says that too much sleep is bad for you. They're wrong, my cats sleep 16 hours a day and have never ever complained about a health problem. Checkmate scientists! #flawless_logic They also fall asleep so quickly while it takes me eons to empty my mind and relax my body so my slumber can begin. Also, I don't understand how they can sleep anywhere. On the floor, on the kitchen counter, on the couch, on my bed taking MY spot (how dare you Minnie?)… I wish I found the floor comfortable, wouldn't need an expensive bed and mattress.

Cats don't have to work or go to school or anything stressful like that. They can do whatever pleases them at any time. They don't have to worry about income as I pay all their expenses. They have no responsibility.

Cats have food ready for them on command. M cat are my alarm clock in the morning meowing incessantly until I get up from bed and feed her. And don't get me started about their food. That stuff must taste amazing to them and it's still very nutritious. It doesn't need lengthy preparation and has long shelf life. If I want the semblance of healthy food, I must spend a good chunk of the day cooking.

Cats have no social obligations either. When someone calls me I better reply otherwise I'm being impolite. Even when I feel like crap and don't want to deal with people, I still have to. Not with my cat. Sometimes they respond when I call their name, and other times they don’t. Only when they feel like it.

Cats get treated in the best of ways. When we take them to the vet they get greeted by the nicest practitioners. Their offices are nicer than our clinics and they have no wait times and appointments at convenient times. The vets tell them nicest words and handle them with the upmost care. I can't say that about some family doctors I met who treat me like a number and talk to me condescendingly. At home, the endearments don't stop. Every day, they receive compliments.

Cats have fun with the most mundane of things. I can play the most stimulating PC game and still find myself bored and sleepy. My cats play with straws, hair ties, rubber balls, some metal string with some cardboard on it and even a stupid laser pointer. I wish that was fun for me, I wouldn't need expensive equipment to entertain myself. Of course, they only play when they feel like it.

Cats don't get punished. Unlike dogs, cats don't learn via punishment. So when my cat misuses the litter box or throws up on the floor for the millionth time, I can't do anything about it. I have to clean the mess up anyways because they don't have to and never will. I can't spray them with water because they don't learn from it. I can't tell them harsh words because it doesn't mean anything to them.

The best part, cats don't care. They only do things when they feel like it and no can force them or stop them. They don't care about their self-image. They don't care about taxes. They don't care about being for late for work. They don't care about the noisy neighbours. They don't care about anything.

When I grow up, I want to be a cat. I'm so jealous...

Why I hate the weekends…

It's Monday, the dreadful countdown has started. You're already thinking about the end of the week, and it barely started. As the days go by, you are fixated on Friday 5pm. By Friday afternoon, your mind is so overfilled with the prospect of the two-day break that you can barely get anything done anymore. Some of your co-workers are not even at their desks anymore; they left early. When it's your turn to leave, you breathe a sigh of relief. It's the moment you've been waiting for. The start of the weekend.

However, what's so odd is that it's already Monday again. The weekend was a blur. Everything that didn't fit the workday was squeezed into the weekend. Groceries, laundry, chores, medical appointments and so on. By the time you've finished all that it's Sunday evening. Just like work, the weekend made you tired. You want to idle, but tomorrow's Monday and you've already begun thinking about work. You don't have time to do anything anymore because you need to sleep early to wake up for work on time.

Our lives are high maintenance. We need to maintain our relationships with our spouses, friends and family. We need to take care of ourselves with exercise, hygiene and so on. Our houses need to be kept clean and our fridge full of food. And to be able to do all that, we need work to make a wage so we can pay for what keeps us alive.

With only two-day weekends, we find ourselves squeezing all that maintenance in such a short span of time. We meet with our friends on Saturday. We do the groceries on Sunday. We do the Laundry on Saturday morning. Little time is left to do what we enjoy. For some, it's simply watching TV shows. For others, it's learning a new art.

The worst part is there is hardly any time for resting the mind and body. Our jobs can be mentally and physically demanding. Our relationships and our chores demand it too. It feels like being on an endless treadmill and there is no way to stop it. Many experience burnout or depression due to excessive stress and little break.

It's clear that the two days we yearn for so much every week are not enough.

Almost every month, there is a statuary holiday which extends the weekend by a single day. Oddly enough, after those weekends end, I find myself more at peace and rested. The first day of work after feels smoother and I'm not as stressed out.

Personally, I have tried to extend the weekend as much as possible. I do the laundry on weekdays, I shop for groceries on a weekday late at night. I try to meet my friends on weekdays. I do all that hoping that my weekend would be empty of such obligations and I would have it all to myself.

I want to spend time partaking in my hobbies on the weekend. However, I often find myself lifeless and staring blankly out the window. My mind is tired, my body is fatigued. By the time I'm fully rested it's Sunday night. At that point, it's time to head to bed and start the cycle of work again.

I feel like my whole life is centered around work. Even though I work a (what is considered) reasonable 40-hour work-week, I feel like too much of time is taken away from me. Not only is it actually being in the office but commuting too. My morning are devoted to getting ready for work: dressing up, packing up a lunch and so on. When I get back in the evening, I have to empty my mind of work and that can take a while. Only a few hours a day are left for me.

I'm a backend software developer and writing code requires plenty of creativity and thought. There's only so much I can muster before my mind quits. On top of that, I'm mentally ill and thoroughly medicated meaning I need even more rest. However, I hear co-workers who are healthier and more productive than complain about the same things I do. No matter how much fun I have at work, I still get tired. Everyone does and everyone needs rest after that. Even caffeine, energy drinks and modafinil can't fix that.

When I first started writing this, I thought that the problem was the weekends were too short. However, it is that weeks that are composed of 168 hours are not enough to account for 40 hours of dedicated work. Our body and minds cannot optimally function without adequate rest and breaks. We're not made for it. Our lives are demanding and work is demanding too much of our lives.

Even though modern society has allowed us to come really far when it comes work ethic, I don't think we are far enough yet. Our basic needs, our own desires, our dreams, our physiologies and psychologies need to be taken into account when we rethink what an ethical and humane work-week looks like.

We are no longer factory workers where our output is proportional to the company's sales figures. Machines and automation are taking over the remedial roles that we used to do. Today, we are artists and developers and managers and service providers. What we do might not make any money at all. Still, what we do demands of us quite a bit and to provide more, we need to do less.

I'm convinced that we need more time devoted to ourselves and those we care about. I want to spend more time caring for myself but I can't because I'm stuck in the system. To live, I need to pay my bills. I'm not lucky so I have to spend most of day working for it.

Someone has submitted this blog post to Hacker News. I encourage to continue the discussion there.