Eight Days a Week, the Beatles, and Me

A few days ago the media commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the momentous first visit of the Beatles to America, when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  They had already been recording for a year in England and had a backlog of material to release.  Normally, the record label that a musical act signs on with will stagger the release of past music so that they won't be competing with themselves, but with the Beatles different companies had rights to their earlier recorded music for release in the United States. So Decca and Veejay Records had their own Beatles singles that they released early in 1964 (such as Twist and Shout and Please Please Me), simultaneously with the main label of Capitol Records (which put out hit singles like I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves You).  The result that spring was an astounding Fab Four dominance of the Billboard Top 100, with five different Beatles songs topping the list at one time...a feat never again matched.  Later on in the year, after the summer in which United Artists and Capitol competed over the release of overlapping material largely associated with their hit film A Hard Days Night, Capitol Records finally settled down into being the only label releasing their music (until 1968 when Apple Records was established, that is).  At that time, they released a big singles hit, titled Eight Days a Week.  I never did like that song, although I did enjoy the flip side I Don't Want to Spoil the Party.  For one, back then (approaching my eighth birthday) I thought the lyrics were silly, not recognizing the deliberate exaggeration about the week's span of days that Lennon/McCartney used to make their point.  Now, though, I have a different take on the song's lyrics...

I work the "graveyard" shift on my job, reporting in to work at 11 PM and getting off at 7:30 the next morning.  My days off are Saturday and Sunday.  When I do come home from work, I am usually too sleepy to be good for anything else, so I do my sleeping from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, after which I start my new day.  So today, for example, I woke up on Tuesday afternoon and will stay up (other than a little nap later on) until Wednesday morning.  So my day is in fact an overlap of Tuesday and Wednesday, making it more understandable as to why I so often get the days of the week mixed up.  In truth, I could give my own "personal" day my own "personal" name: combine Tuesday and Wednesday and I get "Tuwen"...which incidentally happens to be going on right now.  In this way, yesterday would have been "Montue" and tomorrow "Wenthur".  But once I awake on Friday afternoon and I find myself off for a couple of days, my sleeping pattern reverts back to sleeping late at night when I would be at work on other days.  Consequently, I still have Friday (albeit abbreviated), Saturday (in full), and Sunday (also shortened).  So although I'm not exactly living eight 24-hour periods each week, I am still essentially functioning on a schedule of  "Eight Days a Week":

1 Sunmon (Sunday + Monday)
2 Montue (Monday + Tuesday)
3 Tuwen (Tuesday + Wednesday)
4 Wenthur (Wednesday + Thursday)
5 Thurfri (Thursday + Friday)
6 Friday (remainder)
7 Saturday (all)
8 Sunday (daytime)

Naturally, if I were to use these mostly artificial designations around others, no one would know what I was talking about.  Which should help, I think, to explain the degree of temporal disconnect I have been experiencing since I changed over to this work shift nearly a year ago...