The Sunday Night Black Cloud

So, I have been attending church again. It's a different one than I visited before, and I kinda like it. I was trying to find a perfect church, and now that I have accepted that such a place does not exist, I am suddenly content.

When I was in high school, I always thought that it would be a great plan to get all of my homework done on Friday night so that the rest of the weekend would be relaxing. But I was never able to do that. Not only did I wait until Sunday night to start the homework, but I waited until very very late on Sunday night. I continued that throughout college. Then I did some teaching part-time after college, teaching a lab in which Monday mornings usually took a large amount of preparation. I used to put off thinking about it until late on Sundays, just to pretend that the weekend was never going to end. I did not sleep well on Sunday nights.

Now my job is tremendously less stressful. I don't bring work home with me. I rarely even have work-related emails to answer. I don't have presentations to sweat about. I just show up! I only have to pack a lunch! But I have noticed that the vestiges of the Sunday night black cloud remain. Late in the evening I get a vague itchiness to do something productive. I vacuum, pay bills, clean the bathroom mirrors...rarely anything that has a near time stamp for completion. There is no good reason for all this.

I am banishing the guilty feeling, starting today. I am not going to be productive on Sundays any more, from now on.* I'm generally lazy as it is, but I think that I need a full day devoted to recharging. No more cleaning of closets! No more washing the dog! (Maybe I'll stop exercising on Sundays, too, although I'll have to think about that one. I like early Sunday running.) A day for rest and renewal! Goodbye, black cloud.



*Except for that one weekend per month that I work my paying job, of course. That's OK. Somebody has got to be at the hospital.