I have a lot going on right now. Interesting but intense freelance work. Finishing a book and trying to figure out how to promote it. More than the usual amount of business travel. Coordinating major house repairs. Trying to ensure my children are clothed, loved, fed and not too overdue for their dentist appointments…
And so, I thought I’d share the post below. I wrote it a couple years ago, but it seems relevant to me again.
What about you? Do you get the Sunday night blues?
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I would get it every Sunday. It would start in the late afternoon, a sadness laced with dread, a weight pressing lightly on my chest. As the evening wore on, the feeling would get stronger, the weight on my chest heavier, until I tucked the kids in bed.
Only then could I fully contemplate the week ahead. I’d open my Google calendar, with its absurd overlapping red and purple boxes representing all the places I was expected at the same time.
If I’d been a Roman Catholic saint, I could have used the miracle of bilocation to appear in both 11 am meetings Tuesday, and Ruby’s 11 am dentist appointment. If I could have stopped time, it would have been possible to lead the workshop that was supposed to end at 5:30 and still manage to get back across the Bay Bridge to pick up two kids in two different places before childcare closed at 6 o’clock.
Alas, I was a mere mortal, which meant my week would be a series of mad sprints, one after another, without pause. I would eat standing up, answer email in the bathroom, and cut out everything that wasn’t necessary. And still I would be late. Still I would have to beg out of meetings, miss appointments, and disappoint people who counted on me.
Technically, I had chosen to live this way. But looking at my calendar, it didn’t feel like there was any choice involved in how I spent my days. There were so many to-dos that they were squeezing me out of my own life. The truth of this washed over me every Sunday evening.
The problem was more than busyness. There was no flow, that effortless state of being where the ego falls away and we truly enjoy the task we are engaged in, simply for the sake of doing it. Instead, I was racing through every task so I could move on to the next one. In my mind, I had already moved on to the next one.
My Sunday Night Blues ended abruptly that warm spring day when I had a nervous breakdown, quit my job, and completely changed my life.
Now Sunday nights are usually a mix of joy and relief. I’m tired from an active weekend with the kids, but I can also look forward to the coming week because I know I will have time alone to write, to talk to a friend, to look up a new recipe for dinner. No matter what else I have going on—freelance projects, housework, helping out at my kids’ schools—there is room for me. So far.
But this story is still unfolding. I’ve started working again. I’m determined not to fall into the trap of an unlived life, a life without flow, but the work I do is demanding and I’m ambitious. How do I keep from getting sucked in too far?
I’m not the only one who has sung the Sunday Night Blues. What is this phenomenon, do you think? Does it happen to you?
For more on “flow,” watch this talk by the author who wrote the book about it, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I have a profound disdain for Sundays in general. My house is a mess (because we’ve all actually been living in it all weekend) groceries have not been purchased, nothing is in its place and i STILL feel like I need to get everything lined up and organized by 9pm, which makes me insane and crabby from about 3:00 on every Sunday afternoon. Even though I only work my office job 3 days a week (and do consulting work on the other two, I haen’t trained myself do get the grocery shopping done on say, Friday morning).
I always stay up way too late on Sunday nights to hang onto the week-end just a little longer. I tried canceling cable (MAD MEN), but still I sit up way too late talking with my husband, cleaning counters, reading books…being quiet and relaxed. Late Sunday evenings are my guilty pleasure. I pretend there is no work week to come. I don’t get the blues on Sunday. I save them for Monday morning.
As always, Katrina, you verbalize the inner turmoil I constantly find myself battling. I either find myself staying up ridiculously late on Sunday night to enjoy quiet time or cram a weekends worth of cleaning in the hours between 10pm – 1 am, which of course I pay for dearly on Monday. Or I get depressed and go to bed earlier only to scramble Monday morning to get everything together and get out the door. Either way the transition is mentally exhausting. Alot of times I feel like I really only have a 1-day weekend.
I can’t thank you enough for writing this. Before I quit my job, I too was filled with dread at the start of every work week, and it was crushing. I spent ten years training to do my job, but I didn’t get to do it–just rushed through it.
Somehow I thought my dread wasn’t a legitimate reason to quit, and waited until my heal took a nosedive.
I want to work again, but I don’t want to work for someone else. Every time I think about it, the feeling of dread comes back.
“I want to work again, but I don’t want to work for someone else. Every time I think about it, the feeling of dread comes back.”
Yes, I know what you mean. For me, being self-employed has been liberating–a godsend.
Hmmm, all this sounds familiar, except I am in the opposite situation workwise. Yes, I have been out of work for almost FIVE YEARS! Neither my husband nor I have been able to find jobs in all this time. It still shocks me, even though I am living it. We were forced to liquidate whatever we could and move across the country in with my mother. Two daughters in third grade. I have been in graduate school for almost two years, earning a Master’s degree in an attempt to make myself relevant again in the world of paid work. It’s been insanely stress-filled. I am inches close to throwing in the towel and moving in with friends in my husband’s native country, Brazil. People keep telling me they have faith in me because I’m such a strong person. But I do not feel strong. I feel desperate.
That sounds awful. The only thing worse than having too much work is not having any. Hang in there. Sounds like that master’s degree will get you to a new place.
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