It’s nothing. It’s an abstract idea with no relation to anything, ever, and no inherent meaning of its own. In a meeting someone would say “OK then I need X and Z by Tuesday.” Maybe X and Z were the Paterson Report and the Svetlana File, or maybe they were a cup of coffee and a peck on the cheek. Either way, Tuesday would come and go, or it might never come, who knows, but the person definitely wouldn’t get their X and Z. So we’d have another meeting and say all the same things about needing X and Z and now, also, very important, Y, and we need them by Thursday or we’re screwed. And everything would happen (or not) over and over again.
What it comes down to is that people measure time differently. You can’t expect individual human beings, walking around with their memories and feelings in their own leaky little plastic bags, to all agree that a certain day is ever happening at a certain time. Because it isn’t.
Now in meetings we say things like “I need the Crater Ridge Financials six months from when Carol’s father died.” And we get them. We need to schedule a meeting with the Trout Angle people about a year from when Dana had her car accident. We’ll need to hire a new Project Manager for the Dingledine Appropriation in three weeks since Diego saw that really lovely sunset. Esmeralda will need to finish up the Bacteriophage Endeavor by two years after her cat, Serafina Pekkala, had to be put to sleep after a long battle with feline leukemia. Or, if Josh ends up taking over that account, by three weeks before he has to visit his father in prison.
In seven weeks since I escaped the fire we’re going to start teaching other businesses how to use our system. The prediction is that Non-Abstract Calendars will be in wide-spread use by 50 years from when our CEO spent an afternoon with a woman at the Pont Mirabeau and never saw her again.