monday – Bailey Dailey

Miserable

April 13, 2020April 14, 2020 Bailey GunnLeave a comment

Today’s weather was miserable. It had strong winds and a dousing rain. It was cloudy, it was muddy, and it was most definitely wet.

And so I was a bit miserable too. It’s a Monday, it’s rainy, and it’s just another reason to stay inside (as if I needed one).

But today was also a reminder that whatever you’re feeling right now about the quarantine, about social distancing, and about the virus, you can and should be feeling it.

You can be sad, disappointed, mad, tired, frustrated, relaxed, grateful, anything!

If you’re feeling it, then it’s a valid feeling.

So, if you are going to take today to be miserable, like me, then have at it!

All feelings are good. And no one should tell you how to feel.

Love,

Bailey

In Defense of Self-Pity

March 31, 2015April 1, 2015 Bailey GunnLeave a comment

If there was ever a day to pity yourself, that day would be Monday.

The weekend is gone. Your inbox is full. And there isn’t enough coffee in the world to wake you up from the general grogginess of the day. I think the scientific community calls it a “funk.” (Although not the uptown variety.)

Today, I felt a “funk” coming on, and it took me by surprise. It was marked by a vague disinterest in society and an increased frustration over the world’s shortcomings. Without really meaning to, I felt myself slip down into the shallows of my own misery and, appropriately, wallow.

Which is approximately the time that I stepped into my car to go home. Feeling no less melancholy, I popped in one of my mix tapes. This particular gem was called, “When You Get Down.” There, I rationalized, I’ll listen to this CD on the ride home, and I will sing a few ballads, and I will feel better. Actually, I will NOT let myself out of this car until I do.

So, I did. I belted out “Creep” by Radiohead. I crooned “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And then I topped it all off with “All These Things I’ve Done” by the Killers to seal in all of those self-pitying juices. And finally, somewhere between the bridge and a few traffic lights, I was able to leave those weird, funky feelings behind. (I hope they don’t leave a residual stain on the seats.)

And it felt good. Which is strange because almost every single self-help book and graduation commencement speaker tells you that you should never feel sorry for yourself. There are so many people who have it so much worse than you, and you should be thankful, and you need to get up and fight for your right to party, etc.

But what about the times that I slip up, and there is no use trying to “CareBear” myself out of it? I can’t optimistically tell myself that everything will be fine when it feels far from it. The truth is, I can only pull up my bootstraps when I’m low enough to the ground to be able to reach them.

My point is simply this: even if you pretend there is not a landfill at the edge of your property, it doesn’t change the fact that it is there. The smell. The flies. The mountain piled high with other people’s trash. It’s all right there. So, you might as well acknowledge it. You might as well point out the fact that the landfill at the edge of your property mirrors your own emotional run-off that occurs when you choose to ignore your problems with cliches, phony whistling, and half-hearted attempts at finding the silver lining. At least, if you acknowledge its existence, you can do something about it.

So, for me, I don’t mind a few moments of wallowing in self-pity. As long as you don’t drown yourself and as long as you towel yourself off when you are done, why not be immersed in the problems you face? Isn’t that the best way to solve them, to be one with them?

Why Monday is Not the Worst Day of the Week

June 24, 2014June 25, 2014 Bailey GunnLeave a comment

When we say we have a case of the Mondays, we mean that we are unable to rid ourselves of some invisible “funk.” We drop things, we can’t seem to wake up, and productivity is a 12 letter word. (Yes, I had to count the letters in “productivity” 3 times. It’s important to be a beacon of truth when you run a blog.)

Everyone, not just Garfield, hates Mondays. They represent that transition back to work, back to reality, away from kicking back and relaxing. Mondays are like a reset button on the entire week when we would rather hit snooze.

So, why do we hate Mondays? Well, why not? For every reason I just mentioned and more.

Yet, to me, Mondays are a scapegoat. Sure, it’s a little difficult to get back into the swing of things after a long weekend, but Mondays are also that time when you can allow yourself to mess up. It’s Monday, you say, like that explains everything. Blame mercury in retrograde, the weather, or even the broken coffee machine for your moment of forgetfulness or clumsiness. But Monday is an excuse, for an entire day, to give yourself a break. Your high expectations and standards for perfection can wait for Tuesday. In fact, I say we have more Mondays. More time to let ourselves make mistakes.

Now, if Mondays aren’t the villains of our week, what is? If Mondays aren’t wearing the curly mustache and dastardly cape, then who is? Well, it’s a day you probably aren’t expecting. Friday is innocent, and so is hump day (seriously, who thought of that? No, wait, nevermind. I don’t want that factoid in my brain.)

Is it Thursday? The day that feels like Friday but isn’t? Nope.

It’s Sunday. And here’s why.

The problem with Sunday is that it’s deceitful. You wake up slow, you eat a full breakfast, you deliver yourself into the hands of God by singing church hymns, and you take your time with everything. Sunday is disguised like the rest of the weekend with rest and less stress. However, Sunday holds you to all of your promises you made during the week and the weekend. When the partying ends on Friday and Saturday, you’re left with all of your errands on Sunday. And guess what? So is everyone else.

And yet, this is not the main reason I hate Sundays. No, for whatever reason, I experience some sort of ennui, or soul sickness, on Sundays. Maybe it’s because I’m well-rested and instead of running around like a chicken with my head cut off (excuse the violent and cliched imagery), I have time to muse and reflect. This inevitably makes me want to question my life’s right before I have to go back to work the next day. And usually, it makes me want to rearrange my bedroom furniture. So, I’m burning incense and burning through pages in my journal and moving my bed closer to the window for a better view of “the world.”

Or maybe Sundays are bad because they give you the 20/20 hindsight of an entire week with the added bonus of positioning you for a clean slate, an entirely new week. And in doing so, Sundays make you ask yourself: what did I do last week? What do I have to accomplish this week? And although you might have concrete answers for those questions, something somewhere in between the crossword puzzle and your mug of steaming coffee starts to nag at you. Maybe it just seeps in.

We think of Sunday as a day where we can be and think for ourselves. But it isn’t. It’s just another day where we have a routine that makes us feel like we’re getting somewhere. Like we’re making some sort of progress, even though we’re just walking deeper into the circuit we’ve carved for ourselves. And while that may be depressing, it’s important. Because if we didn’t make these tracks time and time again, we wouldn’t realize when we are free of them. And so Sunday is sort of an emotional black hole, where you encounter all of the feelings you’ve been trying to drink and smoke away on Friday and Saturday. And believe me, all of those emotions do have their own gravitational pull, which renders them more similar to a black hole than you realize. Sunday is the end and the beginning of something. It’s a liminal point, like a sunrise or a sunset. You’re sort of poised between two worlds on a Sunday. I mean, did you ever realize that even when you have off on Monday you still sort of feel like something is missing? Even when you are on summer break as a student, don’t Sundays make you feel like you still have homework? It’s because Sundays are meant for deep thought and dancing with skeletons that have been falling out of all of the closets for week.

Sundays are hateful because they make us accountable for things. Things we’d rather leave to the dark corners of the bars we visit. Things we’d rather left unsaid.

But if Sundays don’t launch you into the week ahead, then you aren’t doing them right. (I haven’t been.) Sundays are going to come, and Mondays are going to follow. For the rest of your existence. So, you just need to gather all of Sunday in your arms and take the step. Sundays will make you feel like you are falling off a cliff, but don’t worry. Mondays are soft and full of feathers. They’ll catch you, set you down on two feet. You’ll get back into the swing of things if you embrace your Sundays and your Mondays. Just in time for Tuesday to knock you down with a dirty right hook to the jaw.