...and even better...it's summer too

About 10 years ago I started sending out a short message each Friday morning to coworkers reminding them it was Friday (as if they needed a reminder). The email was always accompanied by a song, that was not necessarily tied to the message or short story. There really wasn’t much to it, just whatever happened to pop into my head at 4am on a Friday morning as a hammered away on the laptop between bench-press sets in the basement gym.

In consideration of folk’s already crowded inboxes, I switched about two years ago from sending out a large group email and went to an online blog format where people can elect whether or not to receive the weekly drivel.  Not surprisingly, not a whole lot have opted in. Oddly, there is a growing number of readers in countries like Latvia, Russia, Ireland and Germany…though I’m not really sure why.

Other than switching the delivery format…not much has changed (except for the diminishing weight on the barbells) and it’s really pretty much the same writing process. I get up, stumble down the stairs, do a set of push-ups to warm up and then start typing whatever is on my mind (often confirming there’s not much). Usually I’m in a hurry…and I rarely have time to proofread. There is one thing however that has seemed to change though…and that is the overall tone of the messages.

Initially, every email was pretty much a feel-good “it’s Friday” message or story about the need to stop and smell the roses that included a hopefully uplifting song (usually some old-school crooner love song or nice operatic number). Over time, it seems to me that too many of the stories have become more rants…probably in a lame attempt to be more entertaining or to provide humor at some else’s expense.  Someone mentioned to me awhile back that the blog had a “the world’s going to hell in a hand-basket” theme.  That actually stung a bit, because it I often think the world would already be in hell were it not for an extreme shortage of hand baskets.

Anyhow…this is a good example of why this is hard to do this every week…sometimes you just don’t have much meaningful to say. It’s been tempting sometimes to fold the tent (I almost never skip a Friday but sometimes the auto email doesn’t go out until Saturday), but there’s always at least one or two people that mention they’d miss it. Ironically, nobody has even said they’d hate to lose the message…they really pretty much all same the same thing. “Where’s my Friday song?” Once-in-awhile, folks say they just like receiving a little reminder that it’s Friday.

Well…here is the reminder and a song. If you can’t close your eyes and enjoy the swaying palm trees and rolling waves on this first day of summer, well, you should probably unsubscribe. Have a fabulous first day of summer, and make it especially good because it fell on a Friday.  Enjoy the weekend, and if you can, spend a few minutes on the porch in a rocking chair with a glass of lemonade. If you’re lucky, you might even hear the sound of children laughing in the distance and the crack of a slamming screen door. It’s Friday…and it’s summer too J  

 

Gabby...

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