FSIM

One of my little rules-of-thumb for determining the quality of my life is how I feel around Sunday dusk. When I was in school, the sunset almost always brought on melancholy or worse. The couple of times I noticed that it didn't, I realized it was either because I'd studied all Sunday or looked forward to classes on Monday. In other words, the difference between weekend and weekday didn't seem like such a rupture.

This rule worked well in professional life, too. When I liked my job, Sunday evening was just a soft transition. When I hated my job, Sunday evening brought on deep depression. This served as a good indication that I needed to make a change.

(You might figure a sane person would just know how he feels without needing rules-of-thumb to figure it out. Maybe you'd be right.)

Anyway, I don't hate Mondays now. I do use the weekend to do the things I have less time for during the week, but the transitions are gentle, and I like both workdays and weekends.

Still, to communicate with the less-professionally-satisfied among my friends, I wanted an acronym to represent the opposite of TGIF, something to express sympathy with how they feel the first day of the workweek. I came up with FSIM. I tried it out on a couple of the worker bees I can instant-message with.

The more artistically inclined friend expanded it to:

Frankly Sorry It's Monday

The more technically inclined friend expanded it to:

Following Sunday, It's Monday