This post is part of my 2022 Word Project. You can read what that’s about here.
Monday, October 30, 2023
7:36pm
At least once a week (because sometimes I swear the universe sneaks another in) it’s Monday. Sometimes it rains. And once in a while you get both on the same day. That would be today.
I enjoy a good rainy day, but sometimes Mondays are hard to deal with. After a relaxing weekend of puzzling and apple pie and pumpkin carving, Monday is particularly hard to deal with. One might think that a nice weekend would be rejuvenating. But a nice weekend makes it all the more challenging to appreciate another Monday.
Since Monday has usurped the whole day, I figured I might as well write about it. Nothing in particular and with no theme, just a helter-skelter sort of word soup about a day that feels exactly like that.
The nice thing about Monday, especially for people like me who enjoy a good do-over, is that it gives you a chance to do just that. Last week is over. Maybe it was great, and maybe it was terrible, but you can forget that all now because you have a chance to start again. It’s like having a mini-new-year every week.
It feels new and shiny and makes you feel like maybe you will finally unlock the secret to the week and do a really good job this time.
Promises To Self get made again. To-Do Lists get written again. Diets get started again.
Which reminds me. The dumbest thing to do on a Monday is start your diet again. Think about it. Every diet starts on Monday, but that’s no fun at all, and gives you more ammunition than you really need to hate Monday. It seems unfair to blame Monday when the problem is the pie.
I stopped starting diets on Monday a long time ago. Sometimes I start them on Tuesday. Or Saturday. Saturday is actually a pretty good day to start a diet because you have time off from work to cook good and healthy things and then you get to feel doubly virtuous for eating healthy on a weekend.
Reason to hate Monday: it interrupts the weekend. A weekend can be going along perfectly nicely. There might be much sleeping and drinking of cocktails, some enjoyable pastimes like puzzles and reading, but never sanding of barrels, and perhaps trying a new recipe or two. In fact, the weekend can be so nice that maybe you vacuum the closet or change the bed sheets and don’t even mind.
Then WHAM, there’s Monday. And the alarm goes off and people who send you emails expect them to be answered. And you’re already kind of moody so you may as well start the stupid diet again even though you really want more pie. And as much as you want to sit on the couch and blog about it, you have to blog for clients instead and it’s usually about something mind-numbing like a plastic box or a spindle.
Reason to love Monday: because you can put your head down and get all the boring stuff done and be one day closer to the weekend. I like to get all the tedious, brain-hurting things done on Monday so I know they’re over for the week and I can move on to less taxing things.
Thing to love about Monday for 16 weeks of the year: Monday Night Football. It’s like a mini-weekend for a few hours. Nobody can bother me, because Football. Nobody talk to me because Football. No, I cannot wash the dishes or find the screwdriver. Football. I go into my woman-cave and say things like AWWWW and OOOOH and PFFFFTTTT. Sometimes I have a bourbon and sometimes I have a tea but never a pumpkin pie spice malted milk ball, except sometimes maybe I will because it is mini-weekend, after all.
How to make Mondays better: sleep late, eat cake. I wouldn’t say this is something I do, but it would certainly improve a day, don’t you think? Cake for breakfast would be ideal. You can start the diet on Tuesday.
Best Mondays: holidays.
Even though I work for myself and my boss never gives me the day off, Monday holidays always feel awesome. Labor Day, Columbus Day, Memorial Day. Days when things close and people don’t expect you to answer emails and there’s no mail so I won’t be getting a letter to clean out my mailbox. It doesn’t really matter if you take the day off, because you could.
Worst Mondays: holidays.
Some holidays don’t belong on a Monday. Christmas, for example. Monday is the worst day for Christmas because you get the day off then you have to go back to work on Tuesday, or Wednesday at the latest, and usually you have to cram everything in that would ordinarily have been done on Monday. Christmas should always be on a Wednesday because there’s no point in going back to work after that, and then it’s new Year’s Eve, and you’re certainly not going to work after that, so really you get a twelve day weekend.
Christmas, this year, is on a Monday. Someone did that on purpose.
I’m not sure anything would change if I was retired or suddenly won the lottery and got to quit my job and blog all day. Monday would always feel like Monday, the same way that September feels like September and gives me the back-to-school heebie jeebies even though I haven’t been back to school in over 30 years.
This particular Monday, for all its Monday-ish-ness, was actually quite fine. I got the boring work done. And it’s closer to the weekend than it was yesterday. Shockingly, there were no interruptions, the server refrained from being stupid for a full day, and nobody emailed me. They must all be dead.
The rainy-misty was very pretty and all the fall colors made it look bright in a subdued sort of way. My jack-o-lantern is grinning widely. I wasn’t going to eat more pie, but it’s Monday, and pie always cheers things up. I’ll start my diet tomorrow.
Tomorrow is a much better day to start than Monday.
Monday, it turns out, is not so much about the day as a state of mind. Any day can be Monday if it tries hard enough. Sometimes there are at least twelve in a week. But if you try hard enough, you can beat it at its own game. Now, if only I could figure out what to do about Tuesday.
Photo: exactly one year ago yesterday, Ralph and I were walking in the rain. It was a Friday.