The Sunday Scaries

The boogeyman known as the 40-hour workweek is upon me. I used to relish Sundays and the peace they gave me before another Manic Monday rolled around. Now?

Here I sit, hydrating face mask on and in my head about what I need to accomplish during this next week and if it’s going to be good enough for the people around me that expect a level of perfection that can’t be realized.

The poster child for people-pleasing if there ever was one. The more I set boundaries, the more I find myself bending to others in order to keep the status quo. The balance I thought I had created in my life is an illusion.

We control almost nothing. No matter how much we seek favorable outcomes – in a job interview, a big project or a relationship – the outcome is always the unknown and I’ve realized I’ve been imprisoned by worry over countless outcomes that do not matter in the grand scheme of it all. What matters is the in-between. How we respond when things don’t go our way or even when they do. My therapist has told me I spend too much energy assessing situations and their potential outcomes – she isn’t wrong. I pay her enough to at least tell me the truth.

So, the Sunday Scaries have arrived. Anxiety high, energy low and contemplating a second glass of wine. The human experience is the wildest trip I have ever taken and I am somewhere between the muck and the magic. Frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The capacity I have to worry about the minutiae of life is the same as my capacity to love and lean in to the even smaller, mundane and beautiful moments this life brings to me every day. Each morning I wake up I have a choice – the same way you do: how will I respond to what it’s in front of me, to the unknown?

The answer is that I will experience a heavy dose of anxiety and fuel that with an iced coffee chaser and figure shit out. Because it always gets figured out – outcome be damned. At least I’m honest with myself.

Welcome aboard the Transparency Train. We’ve got snacks and the destination is wherever your subconscious leads you.

Until Then.