I was never one of those people for whom Mondays were calamitously painful. Mondays were just another day in the week, usually bettered by the accomplishment of having gotten through them and rewarding yourself with a nice weeknight meal and some DVD action.
You’d think, unemployed, that Mondays would bring some sort of illicit joy. I don’t have to go to work! Ha ha suckers, right? Wrong!
Never let it be said that I don’t recognize patterns in my own life, albeit a little too slowly. The past three Mondays have been, in their own little domestic ways, squalls of unhappiness. I can’t install something right, I can’t get through my to-do list, I don’t make it to the gym, dinner’s wrong – any of these things or all of them set me off a-wailing.
I finally put my finger on it today when I burst into tears over another recruiter calling me for another cadre of jobs I’m not looking for. I also burst into tears because my wonderful parents called to talk and offer upbeat support and I was so morose and depressed that it was an effort to sound as cheerful and confident as I know I should be.
Mondays are bad lately because over the weekend, I can sort of pretend that I’m weekending just like everyone else is weekending. But I’m not like everyone else. School is over and it was a highly unsatisfying experience and year. I’ve gone wading back into the job market looking for that elusive part-time job I can do well enough and then leave when I walk through the office doors on my way home. Again, I feel like a penguin thrown from a plane and told to fly simply because she has wings. I don’t FLY well!
Mondays are also bad because I haven’t been doing the thing I’m supposed to be enduring all this humiliating unemployment and part-time work in order to DO: WRITE. Hi, Stuart, Mom, Dad, Luiz, Shana, all you denizens of goodwill and encouragement! My name is Krissa and I haven’t written in over a month.
So I stopped crying eventually today, when I realized that perhaps Mondays are just always going to be hard and the only antidote is to stop, as my dad pointed out, finding palliatives for my angst like dishes and housework, and instead, get down to the business of writing and regular job-searching.
And don’t forget to throw in a little faith. A lot of faith.
So belatedly, I did just that. I wrote for a solid hour, saying hello to my beloved pages again. And all you denizens of encouragement were right. Nothing else quite compares to the validation I get when I write. The balance that throws me off when pawing through endless pages on Monster can only be found in a quiet corner with my laptop and my story.
I think I can do that, keep the faith going. But if you’ve got any spare, Mondays are good days for sharing it.

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