ON TUESDAYS

I’ve become quite fond of Tuesdays.

The unassuming day when nothing seems to happen.

Every other day comes in wearing a costume, dragging some mythology behind it. Monday gets dread. Wednesday gets “hump day,” which proves even cringe can become tradition. Sunday has God and football, maybe brunch with a side of existential dread. Thursday became the new Friday the second people started leaving work early. Saturday needs no explanation.

But Tuesday? Nothing.

No praise, no love, no built-in story.

In short, Tuesday is the background noise of the week. Reliable. Productive. Largely invisible. Overlooked, undervalued, and misunderstood. A day that was never given the credit it deserves.

But look again and Tuesday starts showing its hand.

Tuesday shows up as the hallway.

A side door.

A waiting room.

Ice in a glass.

The kitchen light at night.

The pause before speaking.

A threshold.

The space between songs.

The space between everything.

It is not the thing. It is the thing that connects the thing.

Plain on the surface. Holding more than it explains. Ordinary on arrival, but loaded in retrospect.

If Monday is impact and Wednesday is momentum, Tuesday is the crossing.

It is the bridge from here to there.

Winter to spring.

Old self to the next self.

From what was to what will be.

Tuesday is the day that proves time is still moving.

Tuesday is motion.

I’ve started trusting things with no built-in mythology. Things that never asked to be symbolic. Things that became meaningful by showing up enough times that I stopped calling it random.

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April feels like that too.

April is a Tuesday.

It is when the year stops performing and starts showing you what actually took root. You planted something in January or you didn’t. You made the call in February or you didn’t. March is still close enough to the beginning that you can reframe it, narrate around it, pretend the shape of things is still undecided.

April is the first month that looks back before it goes forward.

Same structure as a Tuesday. No costume. Things arrive in April more as themselves.

April is honesty.

It’s also been a hinge month in my life for longer than I understood.

April is the month I started tattooing, thirteen years ago.

A year before finishing my undergrads in Health and Art, I started down that road. In 2013, I was working two part-time jobs, taking eighteen credits, and trying to survive an apprenticeship at the same time. For a while I was basically a walking zombie. I floated from job to class to the shop and back again until time started to blur.

It wasn’t fun.

It wasn’t a hobby.

I wasn’t “following my passion” in any romantic sense.

It was long, tedious, and exhausting.

For a long time the only thing keeping me moving was the occasional moment where something clicked — like a golf shot you don’t feel yourself hit so much as feel happen through you.

That was enough to keep me going.

Not certainty. Not applause. Not some grand vision of the future. Just enough connective tissue between ambition and comfort. Enough small proof to make the next step. Enough moments where the magic made sense, if only for a second.

Tattooing was my first real attempt at being an artist after academia. I was never going to fail at it. I just didn’t know yet what success would look like. At the time, my only plan was to put my head down, work, and become undeniable.

Of course the shop I joined in 2015 opened its doors in April.

Looking back, that feels about right.

Because April keeps showing up that way for me. Not as some polished symbol I assigned meaning to after the fact, but as a real hinge in the timeline. A month where one version of things gives way to the next. Where what was theoretical starts becoming visible. Where motion stops being abstract.

That’s part of why this April feels important too.

Not because it announced itself that way. Not because I need it to mean something. Certain months, like certain days, earn your attention over time.

And this year I can feel the pattern again.

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Linen is a Tuesday too.

Not a flashy material. Durable. Better in person. Better with wear. Made for movement. One of the oldest materials we still know by touch. Honest enough to outlast most of what tried to replace it.

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A linen room is where the clean things are kept. The inventory. The record of what’s been used, what’s been washed, what’s been returned to ready. An accounting of what you actually have, not what you wish you had.

A Tuesday room.

Linen doesn’t lie about texture.

Tattooing doesn’t lie about permanence.

April doesn’t lie about where you are in the year.

Tuesday doesn’t lie about where you are in the week.

Maybe that’s why this feels like the right place to begin.

Not with a speech.

Not with a grand opening.

Not with a mythology.

Just with something plain enough to tell the truth.