I have always loved Mondays but now I don’t. In fact recently it has been the worse day of the week for me. Which is a pain in the arse.
Tell me why I don’t like Mondays? Or why don’t they like me? As I work through being “the one with depression” if there is a day that I am going to crash it is Monday.
It plays out like this.
I spend time to plan the week, making an organised list in my beloved asana.com so I am ready to go. Then Monday wake up, walk #babybernie to nursery (which is almost too much fun) drop him off and feel great. Then suddenly feel like someone sneaked three bottles of Absinthe and 40 Marlboro Red down my throat before I went to bed the night before, I experience a huge inexplicable sense of dread.
I make a point of walking home through the park as I know the fresh air and exercise helps combat what I am feeling. Often on a Monday I will work from home so arrive home and plough on through my list. Then at some point I just have to stop.
Permission
People who have had similar experiences have told me to listen to my body. I stop and watch Vince Vaughn movies to check out and cheer up. I started trying to watch TED talks when I was like this to be constructive and inspire me amazingly it only made me feel even more inadequate.
There is something to be said for giving yourself permission to do nothing, to switch off, to not be thinking, to create a clearing, white space, to be unproductive and just be. Hey listen if you know me you know I am a lucky man, great friends, family the most super cool wife and forever fun #babybernie – but I never stop, I think I stop but I have to stop so suddenly it hurts.
As fun as it is to crash out on the sofa after the feeling has gone away I feel wide awake and end up working late into the night, this sucks. I miss out on family time and then go to sleep with my brain churning over work not rest.
Life is urgent
I think somewhere in the last few years I confused the urgent. What is urgent to me now is finding two hours to walk to the park and back with #babybernie (the park is 10 minutes away, it take AGES to walk there as we look at everything on the way). This is unplugging, no computers, no headphones and noticing new things.
What made me fall in love with the Internet was the book “The Cluetrain Manifesto” – it talks for the Internet helping us become more human and find our voice.
This is urgent and probably what I thought I was doing.
In the meantime I have to cope with being very up and very down – all I really crave is some consistent feeling.
Luckily I seem to be down at times that don’t matter and I feel I am moving in a better direction every day, but it does bear a striking passing to being slammed from the side by a sodding big lorry while out for a Sunday drive listening to Bill Withers.
