Please click the photo above to play the daily videoA long weekend had done its job so well that Tuesday seemed to take it personally.
At least the morning was sunny. It was proper sunshine too, bright and clean, with none of the haze that’s been hanging about lately. After the long crawl back down the highway, it felt like a small kindness. It didn’t make the day any lighter. It just made the start of it easier to face.
And it wasn’t going to be light. Time away always gets paid for, and with Monday off as well, the bill had an extra day to grow. Everything you left behind has been waiting for you, and it doesn’t wait quietly. The first day back after a long weekend isn’t really a single day. It’s two days folded into one.
Morning clinic ran straight into afternoon clinic, with no gap between them worth calling a break. Lunch got squeezed into whatever minutes were left over. I ate it rather than enjoyed it, and I’ve already forgotten what it was. Some meals are just fuel.
The evening asked for a different kind of effort: dinner with a CAR-T company over from China. On a day like this, a business dinner can feel like one more thing on the list. This one didn’t. It was a nice affair, genuinely so. The conversation went well beyond business, and there was the particular warmth of people who’ve travelled a long way to sit at your table and are glad they did. Everyone was curious, and nobody was hurrying the evening along. It’s easy to arrive at a dinner like that already tired and expecting to stay tired. Every so often it surprises you and gives you some energy back.
But energy you borrow at dinner gets repaid later. It was late when I got home, and the house had already gone quiet. A bag or two from the trip was still sitting there half unpacked, a reminder that only a few days ago I was somewhere else entirely. The tiredness had been building quietly since the drive home, and tonight I finally noticed it.
It’s a strange thing, a return. You come back rested, and within a day the rest is spent. The long weekend didn’t fail. Tuesday was just always going to take it back.
So tonight there are no plans and no ambitions beyond sitting still and letting the day drain away. Recovery isn’t glamorous. It’s mostly just stopping, and trusting that tomorrow will be a little kinder for it.
The week has begun a day late, and it will want to make up for lost time. Tonight, at least, it can wait.