In Defence of Mondays

I don’t expect this to be a popular post.

Mondays have a bad reputation, and for good reason: they herald the death of the weekend’s carefree festivities and the start of a new week of tasks and to-do lists.

The first day of the work week, Monday, is notoriously the most-hated day of the week. No one sums up the societal distaste for the day of the moon than a certain orange cat you probably know…

I’m kind of a nerd about new beginnings, though, and consequently, I have a soft spot for Mondays.

That’s not to say I don’t feel the Monday mind fog sometimes — I certainly did this morning, after a long, dark, late drive home last night — I’m only human, after all.

It’s just that… Mondays still feel novel to me, since my life for the past 5+ years has existed outside of the M-F life. As a tour guide, Mondays were often my Thursdays or Fridays, with Thursday or Friday taking Monday’s place. It was a great life getting paid to take people on adventures, don’t get me wrong, but there was no consistency to speak of: some weeks were four 14-hour days long and others were 10 or more. I could tell you what day of the tour I was on (and what level of exhaustion I had reached) but rarely could I tell you what day of the week it was. Mondays were essentially meaningless by that schedule, as were Wednesdays and Fridays and especially Saturdays, which were rarely if ever Saturdays for me.

So now that I have a somewhat regular and refreshingly flexible work schedule of only five days and 40 hours a week, at a new job I’m super excited about, Mondays for me mean the start of something new, and the chance to jump into my new rhythm of life afresh.

I don’t know how long the feeling will last, but I intend to hang onto it as long as I can, savour the sense of stability my new schedule brings, and maybe one day get my own grumpy orange cat that will hate Mondays because they will mean I’m off to work and leaving him at home alone.

Feature image credit: Unsplash / Larry George II