Being the first day back to my day job after a nice late-year break, I couldn’t help but think of how we sometimes get into “survival mode,” hopping between isolated islands of events to look forward to. There can be a therapeutic element to writing songs. I get hit pretty hard by post-Christmas blues for a number of reasons, so the month of January can really be a struggle for me. It’s a combination of not having holidays to look forward to, having work spin up again after lots of people have been out, and probably a bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder — I do live in Seattle, after all, and our January – June timeframe can be… bleak, to say the least.

The original idea for this song, the “spark” or “seed,” was to do a Bob’s Burgers end credits style song, with a call-and-response portion. Something like, “Visiting the park with my family / that’s an island in the week / Playing music with my friends / that’s an island in the week.” However, by the time I had the rest of the material it didn’t really seem to fit, so I had to leave it on the cutting floor. It still did its duty, because I’ve been finding that a huge part of writing one song a day is coming up with something to write about.

Recorded live with just a ukulele as accompaniment, into the mono microphone on my laptop.

Lyrics

Islands in the week, Islands in the week
Islands in the week, Islands in the week
Islands in the week, islands in the week

You wake up Monday, it’s a kick in the ass
Crawl through the weekdays, they slowly pass
How much of that time do you give to yourself?
How much of that time is taken by everybody else?

Islands in the week, Islands in the week…

The joke’s on us all, if we laugh along
The joke’s on us all, thinking nothing’s wrong
So side hustle, work ‘till you’re barely alive
Run full tilt and still barely survive

Can we sing, a new song?
Can we take control of our own destiny?
Can we sing, a new song?
Or is this all we’re ever destined to be?

Islands in the week, Islands in the week…