What Causes Those Sunday-Monday Blues?

One thing I’m trying to learn to get better at is my overall time management, especially when I end up with extra time on long weekends. Something about work the past 5-10 years has made me truly covet my private time and opportunities to have unscheduled relaxation. Maybe it was all the travel during grad school, or maybe being run coordinator for MicroBooNE and essentially on call 24/7 for 3 months or so during covid. I’m not sure, but to be truthful I have always valued some measure of alone time.

But now I find myself with Sundays and sometimes bonus Mondays off, and while I go into Friday with a sense of opportunity and anticipation, I find myself without energy or motivation on Sunday, and unlikely to accomplish anything. I don’t mean doing extra work-work on Sunday. Sometimes that has to happen, and I do get stuff done when necessary. I mean, I’ll have this idea in mind about submitting a short story, working on my novel, cleaning up my office, or penning ideas for the week down in my planner, and mentally I start putting energy into it, but it never happens. I wonder why? I used to be much more motivated with personal projects and writing, and even did NaNoWriMo successfully many times starting wayyyy back in 2005 or so.

So how does one catch that lightning in a bottle again? How does one replenish that motivation, or find that spark again? Don’t get me wrong – I still write and participate in the writing world. I submitted a short story Saturday evening (already rejected), and I run my own little indie lit magazine which is a fun side project. I also wrote three stories recently, two about a psychedelic trips gone wrong, including cats and giant furniture and weird scientists. It was a blast, and honestly my writing is pretty decent. But submitting my novels to agents and getting my best short stories out there and publish has proven hard. Not the part where someone accepts them… I mean just the ’emailing them off stage.’

Maybe my malaise in my free time is connected to whatever is going on with those stories and books. Maybe there is still some subsurface doubt in myself due to past rejections. I’m not sure. You might say, ‘Well, you probably had some drinks on Saturday,’ but we’ve cut way back. I think we had maybe one drink total last week, and zero cannabis or other substances other than caffeine.

So does anyone have a cure for the Sunday and Monday blues? I’m looking for ideas. I see some thoughts online, including scheduling a movie night or time with friends. I suppose I could also make Monday night into a fun ‘writing night’ for myself. Something to think about.