The dread of Monday has even been immortalized in pop songs like the Mamas and the Papas’ Monday, Monday
, and the Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays
. So just what IS it about Mondays, anyway? Well, there are probably a few things at work. One is the fact that by sleeping in on weekends, you’re literally something very much like jet-lagged by the time you’re trying to get rolling Monday morning. And somewhat disturbingly, it turns out that you’re more likely to have a heart attack between 4am and 10am on Monday than any other 6 hours of the entire week. On a side note, Wednesdays are perhaps more deadly, according to that article. Apparently Wednesday is the most popular day for suicide. Hump day takes on a somber new meaning when you read a statistic like that. But the thing about the “Monday facts” mentioned above is that they’re SYMPTOMS of something. Monday itself is hardly to blame. So who is? Well, tracing it all back to its source, we can probably blame western industrialized society itself, with its archaic 40 hour, 5-day work week, with 48 hour weekends. But at some point WE have to take responsibility. Personally, I’m fortunate enough to be able to structure my time as I see fit, and often treat Mondays like a day off. But if you have a job that you’re less than crazy about, it may make it a little harder to do that. So what can you do? Well, you can try the (in my opinion bass-ackwards) tips in articles like this, that are all based on still being there on Monday, and just doing it differently. Though I guess there is something to be said for those ideas, and some that they omitted, like DON’T MINDLESSLY CHECK EMAIL FIRST THING because it’s almost guaranteed to derail your morning… but why not REALLY do it differently? Take the day off, dangit. If you’re so miserable on Monday that you’re in a state of depressed paralysis about it you ARE sick and SHOULD call in. Just make sure that when you take that mental health day you feel GOOD about it. Feeling guilty about it is probably worse than actually going to work! Whether you catch up on sleep, drag the kid out of school to join you in playing hooky (a very cool thing to do, frankly), or look for another job, the simple act of reclaiming some self respect will do wonders, whether it leads to just being more at ease with your job the next day, or building that business empire you keep putting off. Today is yours. Take it!
