“Monday, Monday”

“Bah-da bah-da-da-da” … I bet you think this is going to be another Monday rant, don’t you? Well, I come here in my full retirement regalia not to bury Monday, but to praise her. If you are retired, you may already be #TeamMonday. If you are looking forward to retirement in the near future, you have probably already thought about how nice it will be not to have that dark cloud descend on your life at about 5:00 pm on Sunday.

That cloud followed most of us from our school days right into decades of work. From our earliest school age we learned that five days a week we lived a life contrary to one that made us abundantly happy. During those 5 days, someone else called the shots. Our working parents were right there in it with us. They tried to cram real life into four or five hours after work, while we as kids ate our predictable dinners, did our homework, watched a show, and were hustled off to bed so their tasks could continue. As adults, we understood why our working moms were so tired. Lather, rinse, repeat. But when Friday afternoon hit and the weekend was in sight, and our lives were suddenly like those old, slow-motion TV commercials of people with arms outstretched, running and twirling through a field of daisies bathed in sunlight.

The weekend. What a concept (thank you labor unions). The freedom, the leisure, the looming MONDAY (gulp)! Poor Monday, you never really stood a chance. I was definitely in the “I Don’t Like Monday” club when I worked. It didn’t mean I didn’t like my job, I just really never warmed to the idea of the 5 day work week. It seemed like (still does) a really antiquated construct to me. It has served its purpose to protect workers, but it’s time to rethink the work week. If you are still in the workforce, the pandemic may have changed your work week a bit, but most likely things snapped back to a model that was framed shortly after the turn of the century (that’s the 20th century). The history of the work week and the weekend is something one might want to be familiar with, and this article from The Atlantic explains it well.

Back to Mondays. I used to really dislike them. I remember being at an education training with some colleagues when I was a principal. The presenter, I’ll call him Dr. D., chastised anyone in the group who didn’t raise a hand when he asked, “Is Monday your favorite day of the week?” I don’t think a single hand went up. My friend and I looked at each other because we often commiserated when it was time to “get up and do it again, amen.” For years after that, my friend and I would text on Monday morning to acknowledge how disappointed Dr. D. would be in us, yet again. Like I said, it wasn’t my job I dreaded…it was years of Monday conditioning that probably started even before I started school. Even preschoolers could recognize the change in their own little lives once Monday hit. Babysitters, different routines, different foods, and different moods with the grown-ups. That’s a lot of psychology to unpack, folks.

Enter the Mondays of retirement. Mondays occupy an entirely different headspace for the retired. During my transition into full retirement, I was viewing Mondays in vacation mode, so the Monday transformation took a while. This transitory phase still had me “bookending” Mondays from an old work mindset. Some of the related emotions still occurred, and I would often be at odds with myself on a Monday. Know that it takes a while to get rid of this kind of thinking. It involves a complete unlearning of how you see time. This is all new terrain, and you are thrown back into the learning curve only this time your old habits may not serve you well at all. The concept of “beginners mind” can be so helpful once you start to feel the dissonance.

Once I realized that both unlearning and a beginner’s perspective about time could reframe the construct of the week for me, I was on my way to living The Precious Days. Now that I am well into my first year of full retirement, with eyes wide open and a conscious mind to boot, I find myself positively giddy about Mondays. They feel magical. A whole week opening up in front of me, full of extraordinary potential? Yes, please. I love the anticipation that comes quite surprisingly with the slowness of a Monday. I love the quiet of the stores on a Monday. I can shop, walk, go to appointments on a Monday encountering few others with the exception of “my people.” The young olds, the middle olds, and the old olds are a quiet society on a Monday. We love our solitude bubbles as we round the walking paths or stroll the aisles, sometimes nodding in recognition of this bliss, this loving of Mondays.

The markers of Mondays for me now are peace and possibility. The confluence of the pandemic and my retirement provided me with the solitude I have longed for most of my life. The safety and peace of not having to be around throngs of others every day in the work world has played such an important role in my mental health. I feel tremendous gratitude as I know this is not true for so many, and that is humbling. For now, I am blessed that Monday has become my life-muse. Most of my Mondays start with time outside and a poem. This one by Mary Oliver seems to speak both to how I used to feel on Mondays and to my new love of magical Monday, which is creating a wondrous world for me 52 times a year.

Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging–

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray

How is your relationship with Mondays? Let me know in the Comments.