Friday

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Working at O Independente newspaper, on those back long years, was a dream achieved. If one can call a dream to have an editor in chief checking every single word you write looking for a meaning. Or to write every week learning 1000 words are not a letter more, are you crazy?! To have a piece of text revised until exhaustion and detail one learns to take out of his system, writing better, to be participative in editorial meetings, to have always lists of ideas and learn to defend them before everyone! Including with those journalists you read and admired before you were accepted to write there! True, one week was short and next week would always smile at the door, faster than one would like. But, the Press rhythm is basically this. At the end, reality was correspondent with expectations. It was funny, interesting, a step up, something never repeated the same way. 

Well, years have passed and Friday is still a very good day at the office. For those acknowledging why, you are not a millennial! Explanation follows. Friday was 'printing/publishing' day for O Independente. Friday mornings were, by osmosis, ‘the day after’ Thursday. People that worked there tell many stories about those Thursday evenings, and is appropriate to maintain the myth! But, getting to the punch line, Fridays were a day of reset. Until noon, we could hear our own conscience at the desk! With silences, sometimes editorial meetings in the afternoons. And those meetings were pure fun if compared with the ones we took on Wednesdays – ‘official’ day, so to speak, for the magazine to went out for printing.

Conclusion: I like Fridays. Like everyone else, yes. Not just because weekend approaches. But have something to do with having learned that routine or the way things occurred. If one had to travel for a feature week/end in Freixo de Espada à Cinta, guess what?, Friday was the day we took a plain, buss or rented a car for this endeavor. If doing nothing else but thinking, ideas were placed in its own spot, and a weekend of rest reading was prepared. Friday was a day of good preparation and proper silence, this helping when carrying out some tasks like checking an agenda, sometimes blended with a short trip to a kiosk to take some magazines from the shelves. And using a tenue rumor soundtrack in headquarters to address a plausible reading for upcoming ideas. It was also very helpful the editor in chief smiled more or heard better than any other day during the week!

Well, that experience settled. Ideas flow and concentration is easier on Fridays. If one can give any piece of advice to another human being about work is this: have more "Fridays" in your week. You will not regret it.