Monday blues – who hasn’t heard of it? It’s that anxious, sinking feeling that can last all weekend (starting, in fact, before Friday at times) that meets and greets Monday(s), often before it’s (or they) happened.
(Conversely, and because it is Monday, and if you are reading it, you may need a laugh, and also simply because laughing is good for you anyway, I will here vouchsafe that I always belonged into the category of those people who interpret the word as “blues” – think sad-ish music that accompanies the feeling of being blue, i.e. various types of melancholy and/or sadness, rather than simply as “blues” – the feelings of blue, plural. In my mind, the Monday blues therefore comes with my very own saxophone player and beat, a somewhat film noir setting, pinstripes, heels and red lipstick. That image in itself, at least for me, literally has the power to dispel the actual Monday blues. I call the really intense ones deep blue blues.
In accordance with the above, I will talk about Monday blues in singular. You can mentally kick it into plural if you belong to the other group of people, the one that sees it as blues, plural.) (footnote 1)
What is Monday blues? Apart from that picture I just painted?
Simply put, Monday blues is depressed, anxious feeling related to the start of work. (Forbes archive has a lovely article on it here)
Contrary to popular belief, however, it’s scarcely down to just feelings of anxiety having to do with feeling unhappy about work in general, or your work in specific. Bullying, including at some point in the past, not only at a specific office, can create a very effective type of Monday related anxiety that cannot be simply removed by trying to feel positive. Similarly, anxieties having to do with the impostor syndrome are often responsible for literal panic regarding the workplace; the person isn’t just “not feeling it”, they are terrified of having to work and be around people because the impostor syndrome is telling them that they can’t do anything right, that they are a fraud and that they will always be useless, and no matter how much they try to work on simply being the best, even if this were to make them the top employee or boss, the feeling would just get worse.
Weekends and holidays that are stressful can create it. So can, ironically, physical issues – hypothyroidism (link), for instance, can cause feelings of exhaustion and depression; so can many other physical states, such as anaemia. Even something as simple as nervous leg syndrome, which may be messing with your sleep pattern, could effectively end up upsetting how you feel at the end of what is supposed to be a restful period followed by a return to work.
People who are taught to see work as a form of burden or punishment experience it as well; in this case, it is psycho-social, and can be addressed on both levels, by a therapist and within the wider society, where we can work on dismantling negative notions about work in general. Treating social media posts that excessively portray work as a “punishment” or “a bribe to steal away your dreams”, for instance, could be treated as potentially questionable, as their only aim is to change how people feel about themselves in a negative way (in order to subscribe to an ideology, and that one that is not compatible with a safe, effective lifestyle, and can be associated to multiple fringe behaviours), and they target, above all, vulnerable people.
The problem is therefore very multifaceted and should be treated as such. But how are we all doing right now and has the pandemic made it worse?
In general, the worst effect of the pandemic has been the constant living under stress, in relatively unsafe conditions (I say relatively because it may be safer than, say crossing a particularly dangerous road in bad conditions, but the danger is definitely present; that is one of the things that makes it so difficult). Loss, fear of loss, job insecurity, smaller pays but similar or static life expenses and above all the impossibility to see the end of it, as well as have any kind of usual rest and relaxation, are our constant companions now, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to predict what will happen next, and even more so to be inventive with our free time.
One of the results may be that we end up resting less.
That in itself, and a highly diminished contact with others, creates a pretty brutal environment for happiness. Above all, the constant barrage of toxic positivity makes it incredibly hard to process those feelings. Yes, you know that you are “lucky” that you have not, as such, lost anyone yet. But should you truly be “thankful”? When the whole thing hangs by a thread, when things can change for the worse at any given moment?
Because we are so rarely socially capable of processing grief and bad feelings, we are actually pretty bad at it, individually and otherwise, and that means that the results are far worse than they’d likely be were we to learn to process them.
Personally, I never used to experience Monday blues post school years. My school experience was not nice; violence of all kinds was rife, and going to school was literally questionable from the safety perspective. Focusing on your school work becomes something of a secondary problem when you are being threatened with a knife in class (with the teacher droning on and choosing, pointedly, to ignore the ten inch blade). Looking forward to going to school, therefore, would have been ridiculous to say the least.
Apart from that very realistic reason not to “feel” Mondays (or really any other day related to trying to navigate the nuthouse that was my school experience), my attitude towards Mondays has always been positive. Perhaps, ironically, it was the absence of very real huge threats that made smaller ones more bearable; human experiences are different and while there is no quota as to how much someone needs to experience for it to be valid as bad, I know that my experience gave me a very different perspective towards stressful environments. This can actually play havoc with how others perceive them, but it is helpful – because I am usually the one person remaining calm about the things that are driving others up the wall, I can better concentrate on the solutions (which, to me, are often ridiculously easy, precisely because nobody is about to try and stab anyone).
During the pandemic, however, I have been noticing not merely a Monday blues – cue my personal saxophonist -, but also the week blues, the weekdays blues, the weekend blues and the holiday blues. When every day is the same, it becomes difficult to still create alternative contexts from work, like museum visits, coffee dates and so on. The more the rules are constantly shifting, the less it is easy to find ways to work with them (the new French curfew, for instance, has literally ruined every bit of planning we have created, and it’s been difficult to get back on track, particularly because of how I work; mine and my partner’s schedule makes shopping for food and necessities nigh impossible, especially if we try to avoid Saturdays, when literally everyone is shopping, to lessen the possibility of contact).
Initially, and for quite a while, I did not much mind the pandemic. I found that we had gained time, because it cut out the commute, and I simply switched where I exercised. We made coffee dates at home. We ordered takeaway when possible to retain a semblance of normalcy. We began to build a truly impressive little home gym (which is still work in progress).
But by now, perhaps because of the uncertainty, the long duration of the pandemic, no real end in sight (the vaccinations effort here are painstakingly slow), lessening options for everything etc (the list is long), we are increasingly at a loss of what to even do with the little bit of spare time we have. As I work both the European and the US schedules, depending on the clients I have, this spare time is often in short supply as it is. But it’s being cut even shorter, and, it would seem, every time we try to catch up, the rug is yanked from under our feet.
I am not the only one to have noticed this, or the feeling of despondency that has been creeping in of late (just a few days ago, when we were pondering if we should do something for the carnival, I caught myself wondering if there was even a point to dressing up and trying to pretend to be enjoying anything at all at this point). Many people I speak to experience the same thing.
The pandemic isn’t going to go away any time soon; that would be highly unlikely. So how do we change how we feel?
I honestly think that we cannot. We can only try to keep going, acknowledge the difficulties openly and try our best to keep as much contact going as possible.
So have that Zoom coffee. Have a virtual work friends night out. Order the same foods and have a living room picnic. If I have noticed one tendency, it is the fact that, the longer the pandemic has been going, the more many are drifting out of sight. The more we are becoming invisible and unlikely to seek contact and to communicate.
This last may have to do with the impact of work from home. Working from home always exposes you in some way to others; there is no physical office space to act as a buffer for the liminality of contacts and clients; they are neither friends nor are they complete strangers, and the amount of space we allot them in our personal spaces is telling of our level of comfort with them. Consider this. There are few people you work with that you would invite home. Of those you work with, vast majority will see the living room/parlour/your office/library (whichever chamber you feel is the applicable receiving guests room). Apart from that, they may experience the insides of your bathroom if they have to use the facilities for any personal reasons or after an unexpected accident with a beverage or something chocolate covered and their clothes.
Preciously few will gravitate to the kitchen; in general, people who gravitate to the kitchen are people we feel closer to. We’re talking very close if they know their way around enough that they can help prepare food, make the tea/coffee/drinks and know intimately how you take yours. It says tons that they are a part of your life to the extent when they aren’t just invited to do so, or politely offer to help, but also know to do so without having to discuss it first.
Were someone to overstep that invisible boundary, both parties would likely feel uncomfortable, because we delineate the amount of privacy to all our spaces. Similarly, the people who see the bedroom are either spouses/partners/closest family (kids, parents and closest family and friends), lovers or friends/colleagues that are becoming so close that they will go help you with your toddler while you are drying your hair after having been caught in the rain or find you in the bedroom after a catastrophic day at work/breakup. But these are normally things we don’t even think about, and yet do; and now, this decision is daily taken away by the mode of work, and, I might add, by the more and more presumptuous, ignorant ways in which this work is now being redefined (I have written on this type of emerging discrimination elsewhere (link)).
Because you likely do not live in a small manor with ample, sunshine and light filled windows and servants to keep all other disturbances at bay while you host meetings in your perfect spacious office, the consequences are twofold.
Firstly, you are having your private space laid bare even to people that would otherwise not be privy to it.
Even if you invited your work friends, you could hardly be expected to do that with random clients and business connections, who now see everything (often literally when people live in very small spaces) at will. Secondly, this space, instead of being accorded respect, is now repeatedly being presented as unfit for the new ideas of what the perfect home space “should look like”.
Thirdly, some people are beginning – to or have been all along – presume upon not just your time (with employees being more often expected to do “a little bit more”, which is neither paid nor actually just a little; a psychological feeling that you must now pay some kind of work toll, a feeling of guilt that you are working from home, seems to be a frequently present result of this), but upon how you are handling the space, the space itself and any other incumbents in it.
That’s plenty of reasons to start hating and dreading work. Stalking, also, can be a result of that; I recently discussed a case with someone in which one employee had started stalking another, and the worst part about this is that it is easy for a stalker in work context to figure out where you live.
Bullying, also, has moved online a lot and is often being handled very poorly.
In short, if you are not feeling Mondays, there may be a very good reason why.
So what can be done about this?
The worst part of the whole pandemic situation is that, ultimately, most of us can do nothing. What we can do, however, is the following :
- We need to reassess how we are approaching discriminatory behaviours while working from home. Especially as this is likely to hit the minorities the hardest (because they are the least likely to have the living space that “fits” the imagined perfect space), this is of utmost importance if we are serious about our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Even if we resolve the ones we have been focusing on, new ones like this one can pop up at any time, and it’s best to address them openly before they become engrained in social behaviour.
- We need to be serious about negative interactions at work that are now moving online. If you don’t have that figured out yet, it should be your very next step.
- We need to treat other people’s living space and outside of work obligations with kindness, understanding, humour and respect. If we want to receive the same back, and we should, we need to be aware that everyone’s life is different, and that preconceptions creep in at all levels. Rid yourself of preconceptions about what something should look like in this context and approach situations with humanity and positivity.
- We need to amp up our contact amount. The more we are starved for it, the more many are likely to withdraw. Seeking contact is normal mammal behaviour. We need it, and it’s currently highly curtailed. Therefore, make sure you have that Zoom chat with the one colleague you haven’t actually seen or talked to in a while.
- Keep planning nice things. Looking forward to something is difficult right now. But plan both shortly and for a longer stretch. Longer stretch – consider all the good things that you would like to do/see/experience once the pandemic is finally over. Short stretch – find and keep up little things that make you happy. Like a favourite beverage on a specific day. (This is also a very good way of keeping track of the days as they keep merging into one solid mass.)
- Make sure you are getting as much rest as you can manage. Remember, rest is also doing an online martial arts or yoga class, or painting a mug (something I haven’t done for years, but may revisit), or playing an online game with a friend. Rest depends on what we find fun and relaxing and we can physically, emotionally and space-wise accomplish at present.
- Share. Sharing how you feel, trying to make someone smile or laugh, isn’t just going to make both of you feel better. It may also help create framework for behaviour that can alleviate at least some of this darkness.
Bottom line is this. There are many reasons for feeling off on Mondays. (Or any days, really.) Nowadays, those reasons have multiplied. The best way to deal with them is to own the fact that we are feeling off, explore why we are feeling off and take steps to make things better. In case of senior management, don’t try to “fix” everything and everyone overly enthusiastically, as that can just make people retreat further into their shell. Instead, create the environment in which bad behaviour (like bullying of any kind) isn’t tolerated, people feel comfortable talking, including repeatedly and about bad things and sad feelings, and build on a feeling of mutual empathy.
We’re never likely to completely eliminate the Monday blues. But we can make it rarer and far less crippling than it can be.
Footnotes:
1. And while it has been approached from the “it is all a hoax” perspective as well (link), it is necessary to separate the somewhat questionable scientific work that started the phrase, the effect it might have on people who hear it repeated and think they need to feel it, and the very real feelings that are known to many, but are not necessarily depression. Human emotions and fears are complicated and complex, and it is equally dangerous to dismiss them because of a tangent as it is to over-present the tangent as valid.