I don’t trust anyone who claims to like Mondays. I consider myself to be an upbeat person, and am more than willing to find the positive in any scenario, but when it comes to Mondays, I am just as bitter as anyone you’re likely to meet. I wake up in denial. I will refuse to believe it’s really Monday until I have no choice but to do so. From the moment I wake up, through my breakfast, the subway ride, saying hello to the guy who works the front desk at my office building, until the moment my workday finally starts, I’m convinced it’s all an elaborate charade and everyone I’ve met during that morning is in on the prank. If I had it my way, I’d blast every Monday out of the realm of existence.
But since I have as of yet been unable to destroy Monday (and then I’d have to figure out what do about its evil brother, Tuesday) I’m working on how to make Monday more tolerable. No, we’re not going to talk about sleeping through all of Monday and somehow getting paid and not getting in trouble with your job. Though, if you have secured such an arrangement for yourself, congratulations, and please give me a call.
Anyway, my trick to beating the Monday Blues is simple. Though the idea wasn’t born on a Monday (because really when has anything good ever come out of a Monday?) but on a Wednesday, which I’m no big fan of either. The only things Wednesday has going for it is that is not either Monday or Tuesday. Let’s get back on track! Some coworkers and I were out for lunch having burgers at a local hangout of ours. At some point during our lunch, we collectively remarked how great it was to have lunch out (at my job, eating lunch in our offices is a regular occurrence), and I came up with the idea of us making Burger Monday a thing. Burger Monday is as simple as it sounds. All it involves is going out for burgers, on Monday. We go to the same place, at the same time, and usually the same people join in. This might not seem like a big thing, but it goes a long way to making Monday easier to deal with.
I remember telling a friend of mine about Burger Monday shortly after the idea was conceived. She laughed and said her method to getting through Monday was just putting her head down, grinding through, and making Monday end as quickly as possible. But I take the opposite approach. While Burger Monday is by no stretch a grand gesture, it is still a treat. Especially at my job, where there’s very little time for my coworkers and I to talk and socialize without having a zillion other things to do, it gets us all out of the office to catch up.
On the rare occasion that I can’t make it to Burger Monday (Burger Monday has become enough of a thing that it happens whether I can go or not!), I try to find some other way to treat myself. I’ll treat myself to something special for dinner (either cooking or some kind of takeout) or find some other way to break being reintroduced to the monotony of the workweek. Essentially, one way or another, I make sure that on Monday I treat myself to something.
I don’t like Monday. I never have, and unless something radical happens, I don’t expect I will like Monday anytime in the future. But I have learned how to deal with Monday. By giving myself something to look forward to on Monday, I’m not as annoyed to know that Monday is waiting for me at the conclusion of every weekend. And if I can wake up on Monday and not be entirely annoyed at what day it is, I’ll take that as a small victory.
