I’ve been feeling guilty lately about the growing infrequency of my posts. But then again, perhaps it’s a regionalism.
As you probably know, I come from a blue-collar upbringing. People basically worked and slept, in that order, and not much more. Vacations were usually a couple of days each summer down the Jersey Shore, where, ironically, I hang my hat permanently today.
But now as I live in this suburb of New York City (sorry, but it’s true that all of New Jersey is somehow considered either a suburb of Philadelphia or a suburb of New York), I am in the land of white collars.
We have just come out of the glorious end-of-summer ritual known as Labor Day Weekend. From my perspective, it’s been a very long weekend indeed. In fact, it’s been about a month.
See, in this, the greater Manhattan area (there really are no other boroughs in New York — ask anyone from New Jersey), the entire month of August is part of Labor Day Weekend. E-mails go unanswered, calls go unanswered; people pretty much disappear to parts unknown and business crawls along like traffic down the Garden State Parkway on a summer Saturday morning toward Seaside. No one seems to get very upset about this — or at least that’s what I assume, as I have been unable to find anyone around to ask.
It used to frustrate me; it still frustrates me, but then I find my “happy place” and realize that, like the Shore traffic, it’s not like anyone is getting ahead of me; we’re all in this quandary together.
And so I celebrate the end of Labor Month. How was yours? Now let’s all get back to work.
Peace,
Kerry