I have a close friend who frequently confides in me that she suffers from the Sunday Blues. Or Sunday Anxiety. Or, just, The Sundays.
Though anxiety is admittedly something I struggle with all the days of the week, I can indeed relate to a special brand reserved just for Sundays.
Perhaps it’s leftover butterflies—or, let’s be real: trauma—from being teeny-tiny angst-ridden little schoolchildren. The start of the Monday mayhem (fun fact: “Manic Monday” is one of my go-to karaoke songs) was basically downright horrible for the-bullied-among-us, and that brand of fresh hell sat in our muscle memory with the same staggering pain as those enemy-spewing jabs.
Or maybe The Sundays are so powerfully shitty because we live in a culture of workworkwork and not enough play and every single weekend is too damn short.
Whatever my friend was feeling, she’s in good company—which is like salt in the wound because part of the experience of The Sundays is feeling like you’re entirely alone in it.
Does this sound familiar? It’s Sunday afternoon and you’re starting to feel weighed down by the work you didn’t finish on Friday. Your home office is two feet from where you’re trying your best to enjoy your weekend despite the cat vomit and senile dog situation, and your to-do list seems to be intrusively butting in with your pathetic attempt to watch a fix-it show and forget it.
You get cranky. Your partner asks if you want to take a walk because it’s so pretty out and you hold back the urge to scream about all you have to dooooooOOOOOOoo. You say no, you’re tired, but maybe another time. Even though on the inside, you know that you can’t possibly ever take a walk for the rest of your life because you are too radically behind to wrap your head around any sort of frivolity. Life is hard, even when you have it damn good. And you feel a little guilty about that, which brings the mood even further down. One melatonin and a microdose of THC later, you fall asleep—contorted-like, because there are four small animals who somehow take up all the blanket.
Then you wake up, and your worst fear has come to pass: It’s Monday again, goddammit.
You hop on a Monday morning Zoom call and call in your best fake smile. People in small boxes make chit-chat, asking how your weekend is. Most people smile and say it was great. You wonder if they’re lying as you echo their sentiment. “It was great,” you say, secretly thanking your parents for paying for you to go to acting school for all those years because Look, Mom … It’s paying off.
Sometimes you wonder if you’re depressed, or if it’s just the world outside that’s got you down. How could anyone in their right mind not be depressed, given the state of the world? You head to the fridge to sip your new expensive CBD-infused seltzer. Your colleague told you it was like a cocktail in the middle of the day, but the kind you’re allowed to have without being fired. So you splurged, but you don’t really feel anything.
Holy shit, OK. Not sure where all of that came from, but regardless, here are my tips for conquering The Sundays like it’s Friday all the time:
Be gentle with yourself. The only thing worse than going through The Sundays is judging yourself for it. The world is an asshole; you don’t need to be one, too. Not even to yourself.
Be gentle with those around you, especially those under the same roof. The Sundays mean you might be cranky, but they also mean your partner might be, too. Lighten it up by lightening up. If he snaps at you because he can’t find the canola oil, let it go. Seriously. If you find yourself thinking about it anyway, force yourself to think about the things in your room: the big purple bean bag chair. The wooden statue of a crow. Change your inner monologue, and let it go.
Don’t drink (at least not too much) on Sundays. (And I say this even though I had a glass of wine this past Sunday evening.) Alcohol usually feels really good at first, but then that shifts, quietly. It’s a depressant, after all. Instead, drink some expensive CBD seltzer. Just kidding. Drink water. Bubbles optional.
Close your office door when you’re not in there. Unless you live in a small apartment in NYC and your “office” is also your bedroom. In which case, godspeed. (Note that I worked and lived—with another human and a large-ish doggie—out of a 350-square foot apartment for many years and it was completely fine.)
Force yourself to take a walk even if you’re feeling agoraphobic or lazy. God, I hate when people give this advice, and here I am giving it. But it really does work, and the rest of your life will not fall apart if it does. I promise.
Cry if you need to. Get it out. It will pass. I cry almost every day. Maybe that’s not normal but I’m not judging it. It usually passes in less than three minutes and as I reapply my mascara, I feel good knowing I’m not a person who bottles things up. So there’s that.
On Monday, calendar. And yes, I’m using that as a verb. It helps me a lot to calendar things out so that I can be realistic about my workload, cancel any unnecessary meetings, move any not-pressing projects (though that can also be a terrible decision, so only bump it once), and (this is important) make sure to calendar in some downtime, too (I calendar in dog walks and lunch every day).
Have a dump-it-down list. Whenever something occurs to you that you forgot to do, put it on that list and calendar in some time (even just five minutes) to visit that list and calendar out those things (sometimes I calendar out something as meta as “schedule that meeting”).
Schedule in fun or (if fun feels too far removed from your life) different experiences. That same friend and I are planning on finding a giant reservoir at a park near my house. We are also going to go to a pumpkin patch … even though she doesn’t know it yet. If we don’t put it on the calendar, we won’t do it.
Walk in beauty. That’s something that particular friend has encouraged me to do. I don’t really want to over-explain this one. If you’re doing it, you’ll know it. If you aren’t doing it, change your direction.
I hope that next Sunday is a little bit better for you … and especially, for my sweet friend.
xo,
jazz
P.S. Come to Drag Queen Bingo Wednesday night. It’s sponsored by the Newark LGBTQ Center, where I sit on the board.