Too Many Mondays

There’s a reason your car doesn’t enjoy driving in the city (or Henrietta). Too many red lights. Vehicles can’t stand all that stopping and restarting. That’s what red lights force them to do. Cars hate it. And it kills your miles per gallon, too.

What red lights do to cars, Mondays do to you.

Think about it. Why has no other day been as universally panned as Monday? From Garfield’s primordial meme—“I hate Mondays”—to the Carpenters’ immortal “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down,” the first day of the week has always borne the brunt of criticism.

Unlike what the calendar implies, Sunday is not really the first day of the week. For those unfamiliar with the Bible, the Lord’s Day is the seventh day of creation; ergo, the seventh day of the week.

But even if you go by your day planner, at the very least, Monday remains the first day of the work week.

And maybe that explains its universal loathing.

After a weekend of relaxing (remember, God rested on the seventh day), Monday looms ominously as a return to the rigors of the grind. Back to work, back to school—it doesn’t matter which. It’s a rut most of us would prefer never to revisit.

Why might that be so?

Because it has all the motivational force of a red light.

You’ve been stopped, but once the light changes, you must go. It takes effort for your car to reach cruising speed again. Very inefficient. That’s why you lose gas mileage.

It’s the same as Mondays. How long does it take you to get back up to speed? By lunch? By the afternoon? Not until Tuesday?

That’s the problem with Mondays. They’re inefficient by design.

And annoying. Between your body and your mind, Mondays irritate you like fingernails on a chalkboard. You just want to get it over with. Tuesday can’t come fast enough. The restart process is unbearable. Yes, if you’re like everyone else, you hate it.

Now, imagine there being more than one Monday in a week. For several consecutive weeks.

That’s been our reality these past few weeks.

That’s what happens when Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve fall on a Wednesday. Sure, you get Thursday off, but you have to go back to work on Friday.

Forget what the calendar says. Those two Fridays feel just like Mondays. Worse, they’re Mondays without the hope of a Tuesday.

I mean, what’s the point? You spend the whole day getting all revved up for what? Saturday?

That just doesn’t make sense.

And the strange thing is that this happens every year at Thanksgiving, yet Black Friday doesn’t feel the same. It’s like a relaxed day at work. There’s no need to get back up to speed. Why is that? And why did these two past Fridays give off such a different vibe?

Perhaps it’s because they came at year’s end, when so many deadlines expire.

Or maybe it’s that they ran rat-a-tat-tat, one after another, smashed so close together.

Consider the cadence of the days as a beating drum. Something like this: Monday-x-y-z-Monday-z-z-Monday-x-y-z-Monday-z-z-Monday.

That’s five Mondays within the span of two weeks. In other words, during those fifteen days, a full third were Mondays.

That’s a lot of stopping and starting.

Here’s the worst part. Look at that cadence again. Only two of those days were full workdays (x), which were followed by two partial workdays (y). The other days were “rest” days (z). That leaves five Mondays where you ramped up for work that, for the most part, ended that same day.

Did you hate it? Or did you solve the dilemma by simply taking those two weeks off?

If you chose the latter, you’ve shielded yourself from too many Mondays.

As for me, I didn’t get the choice.

Too many deadlines.