What is it that you do to fight off the Sunday scaries?
What is it that you do to fight off the Sunday scaries?
If I wake up early, I will try and relax but be slightly productive by tidying up. Then I’ll make some tea before sitting and deciding what to do. Sunday scaries aren’t even on the horizon because the day is pregnant with potential. It’s easy for thst potential to shrivel up and miscarry though. Sometimes I’ll waste hours reading the news, other times I will read a book or play a video game.
Once it gets close to noon and the day no longer feels young I’ll begin to get anxious. Maybe I have some bigger chores to do that I shouldn’t put off. Or maybe the feeling that the day is lost merges with a similar feeling about life, which urges me to do something, anything, with my time.
If I’m not careful, time can pass with nothing being accomplished and it’s suddenly almost 5. The weekend is gone and it’s time to enter self care mode. That usually means good food and entertainment in one form or another. As it gets dark I’ll start trying to stop time with booze or a bit of weed as I indulge myself with sports or a movie.
Then it’s time for bed.
Easily the most effective for me has been to develop, review, and/or do one action item off a plan to be able to leave the job and work towards something I want to spend my time working on. Knowing I have a plan, remembering it and seeing that it’s a good plan, and taking steps on that is a concrete reminder that the job I hate is temporary and I’m not stuck. That reduces the scaries significantly for me.
Then I also like to clean my place, light a scented candle, and read/watch something to make where I live feel cozy, comforting, and home-y. A reminder that even though the job is shit, I have at least built a home that I come back to. Might call a friend and talk it out too - works on both levels.
What do you do?
Thr scaries start for me once it gets close to noon and the day no longer feels young. The feeling that the day is lost merges with a similar feeling about life, which urges me to do something, anything, with my time.
That’s when I usually get a burst of productivity that lasts until it’s 5pm. The weekend is gone and it’s time to enter self care mode. That usually means good food and entertainment in one form or another. As it gets dark I’ll start trying to stop time with booze or a bit of weed as I indulge myself with sports or a movie.
I will often go to bed early so I can be all cozy and in a safe space to go down a wikipedia hole, read a book, listen to music and just veg in general.
Once the day is actually over the scaries usually have disappeared oddly enough.
Similar experiences. I was thinking “that’s it? Now i have to do this 5 times a week, recover on the weekend, and then again for the rest of my life?!”.
People kept telling me you get used to it. I felt hopeless after couple of years because it didn’t get better.
Now I realize that a full time job doesn’t need to mean that you are a husk working your life away, always completely drained.
And you evaluate the parts you don’t like, asking “is this somehow serving the parts I do like?”
The job is meaningful if it allows your family to have a house.
But if there’s another job that maybe sucks less but pays just as much, then maybe your current job isn’t so meaningful. It’s just meaningless pain.
By doing this evaluation you get benefit on both sides of that outcome:
I try to just do stuff I enjoy. I’m a football guy so Sunday is a great day for me this time of year. If I’m not doing that though, I’m spending time with my wife and daughter or tinkering with things that interest me like emulation.
Overall I make it my day and try not to worry about what is happening tomorrow. I will say the thing that really puts it into perspective for me is that I left a job earlier in the year that was unhealthy. I was working overnights and weekends. Sometimes I was only home 8 hours before I had to go back. I decided it was controlling too much of my life and I moved back to a regular Mon-Fri job. I’m so happy to have a regular schedule again and weekends to myself. I do my best to appreciate the time I have now.
100%
I have a lot of “momentum” mentally, it takes a lot for me to task switch from work to play or from play to work.
I should clarify. By “long term” I mean longer term than one week.
Get some goals that the job feeds into. This can be:
This is three different types of long term goal that can make your monday morning meaningful.
Monday sucks when all your reasons for getting up are negative. Examples of negative meaning are:
If all the meaning that’s getting you out of bed on Monday morning is like the above, your life is basically a living hell. Being motivated by fear sucks really bad.
Finding goals that are positive lets you be motivated by desire, which feels much better. Positive goal examples:
It takes a while to get the hang of it, but organizing one’s life as being motivated by desire makes life so much better you can’t even imagine it.
just living for the weekend
You want a piece of my heart?
You better start from the start
You wanna be in the show?
Come on, baby, let’s go!

I love my job and usually work weekends.
Drawbacks. I get paid less than tuition. I didn’t get renewed so I get to find a new one.