ART: (Let me) Tell you why I do like Mondays…
The Boomtown Rats got it wrong — Mondays are the best.
If I told you that I roll out of bed most Mondays and am excited about the coming week would you think I was either —
A: Completely nuts
B: Still drunk from Saturday night
C: Odd. Just odd.
D: Odd, but on the money
I’m sure the majority came up with either A or B or even C, but D would actually be right.
Yeah, yeah I know, Monday means work for most of us, and having to leave the two days of weekending behind and having to wait five more excruciating days until the weekending begins again.
Horrible. Apparently.
‘Yeah, nah’, as we Aussies say.
OK, I have to offer full and frank disclosure that I’ve not really lived a life chained to the ‘9–5/M-F treadmill’…and maybe I should revisit this piece when I’m a couple of months into my new job that, while not quite 9–5, is certainly more constructed than my life of recent (the last 7–8 years ) times.
But even when I was last working more standard hours, I don’t EVER recall hating Mondays.
In fact, I’ve always felt incredibly energised and excited about Mondays.
Are you currently seeing the image to your left on your head as I write this?
OK, that’s fair. I don’t blame you — I am probably sounding ridiculously and overbearingly glass-half-full right now to the point of you vomming in your mouth a little as you reach for coffee number three to keep you motivated for the day ahead.
And yet…c’mon, think about it.
Why start the week moaning?
Why wipe away whatever fun — brunching, gaming, sporting, family-ing, drinking, sleeping, Netflixing — you had for a whole two days just because you gotta rock up to the place of work and make some cash to allow you to do the same or better in five days time?
Why not be all, “Dang, I just had a sensational weekend, and sure, another day would have made it that much more sensational (and mean I got through another entire season of GOT/Breaking Bad/Walking Dead etc), I’m gonna smash out another great weekend in a few days time again. Booh Yah.”
It’s the same as people who’ve just been on an amazing trip overseas or wherever and whinge about being back and how depressed they are.
STFU.
Don’t be a dumbarse and go spoiling all those good memories by being all “Poor me I had to come back to my normal life, why can’t I be scuba diving in Barbados anymore, waaaaaaaaaaaah…”
What I like about Mondays (or whatever YOUR first day of the week might be because we do live in a less binary work world now where one worker’s weekend is another’s workfest) is that it’s the chance to start all over.
It’s an opportunity to leave whatever happened during your last week behind and make changes if shit went down, repair relationships with fellow workers you’ve had a falling out with, work a bit harder to get that promotion you damned well deserve…
Or get to work and realise how much you need to find a new job…(ps JUST DO IT.)
It’s the chance to be brave, and energised, and to bring change to your life.
I’m struggling to remember a saying I once came across…it was something along the lines of…
“Treat each morning as the opportunity to sign a new contract with existence.”
Now, that sounds a wee bit tiring to me, but I reckon doing it once a week might be viable.
So, here’s the deal.
When you roll out of bed on your next Monday, or version thereof, try and be a little more open to the fact that it could be the start of something big.
That it does offer the opportunity to see things through fresh eyes, hear through fresh ears and DO things via fresh hands.
That Mondays can be about the promise of things to come, and not a hollow stinging reminder of the weekend you’ve left behind.
That is, if YOU want them to be, of course, which is the key.
Have ‘A’gency.
Take ‘R’esponsibility.
Always ‘T’ry.
So stART today.
And remember the ART of it all.
