> In a sense, a person is given too much freedom on Sundays and this lack of control can produce anxiety.
I feel this in a very specific way. It's not that I don't have anything to do, it's that there are so many options. There are so many things I want to do on my days off that I get overwhelmed and spend the day thinking which one of my projects to tackle.
In the end I usually just pass the time and not do anything constructive.
> Many people have shared with me their contempt for Sundays, and there seems to be no shortage of psychiatric literature referring to a “Sunday neurosis” or a feeling of gloom related to the day.
Oh, can relate. Work’s the next day, of course it’s a downer. You spent yesterday catching up on necessary stuff you’d deferred in favor of work for five days straight, so didn’t really have an actual break, and now your momentary breather has another damn work day following it, so you feel like starting anything you actually want to do is pointless. You dread night because you’ll be waking too early to the alarm clock. Yeah, it sucks, there’s a reason some cultures have the attitude that anything short of a week isn’t a real break from work.
I'm German and I've never heard of this word but will use it from now on. The fun thing about German is that you can smash any number of nouns together so you could make it Sonntagmorgensleere or Wintersonntagsleere etc.
It's only an orthographic convention. English and all other languages can make compound nouns of arbitrary length, and the parts can but don't have to be nouns. In fact, there don't have to be any nouns in a compound noun! E.g. backup.
English just puts spaces between the parts usually, but as I understand it, this is unusual among Germanic languages.
I've noticed something similar in myself. So I dedicate Saturday to rest, and Sunday to the household. This way, Monday isn't so jarring, and Sunday feels great.
Hard to put this succinctly but it has a sense of the sad and exhausted feeling one gets when they're mildly sick and must stay home, and likely stay in bed, to recover but you don't really want to do so.
In other words, Sunday is our only true day to rest, the weekday was busy with work and scattered after-work commitments, and Saturday was devoted to a combination of chores and using every last bit of energy you had in the week to enjoy life and friends. So we may try to mentally force ourselves to take a day of rest and limited exertion, which in turn makes it not restful or fulfilling.
It's sort of like when you know you need to go to bed on time so that you can have full energy for a busy tomorrow, it somehow makes your sleep worse knowing that.
Get some stuff out to do a thing you’ve been meaning to? But you just cleaned the house. If you don’t pick it back up today, it’ll sit out all week. Will you still want to do that next weekend, so it’s not so bad it was cluttering things up? Maybe not, that’s far off. Kids or pets will get into it and mess things up. Better not do that.
Maybe really dig into that math book you started last Sunday. Wait, wtf does any of this mean? Ugh, it’s been too long, you’ll need to backtrack… never mind, this is hopeless.
Pick up that long narrative video game you started last month but haven’t put time into since. Forgot the controls, this part’s too hard now, and you don’t remember what was going on anyway.
TV or reading light fiction and watching the hours ‘till work tick down from the mid-teens, it is. Again.
Note that Sunday neurosis described in the article (perceived lack of purpose) is very different from the more common Sunday blues (another work week ahead...).
As for the latter, I remember that during the time when I had 4-day week (I work in an European country where parents of children up to certain age can ask for a reduction of their workload and their employer can't refuse it) the Sunday blues was practically nonexistent: I just had two days of work, then free Wednesday to ply with my daughter, and then two more work days that I really enjoyed.
I think they’re connected. It’s really hard to do much with a Sunday other than kill time, because the work week follows it (and the day before is usually chewed up, at least largely if not entirely, with necessary but unpaid work).
Yes, of course - this is the only fair solution IMO, but I didn't even feel it. After that period, I asked my employer (and several others) for the same arrangement but nobody wanted to agree, they all want me to make more money and work more whereas I want to earn less money and work less. But if someone is lucky enough to get it, I wholeheartedly recommend it. I felt like fully enjoying my life.
"In the end, it was Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55 when you know you've taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul." -- Douglas Adams
This happens to me when I’m away at a convention or some vacation, and then the last two days arrive. For several days, one has no thoughts of home, nor travel arrangements, nor often, of driving. And then the day comes when you have to clear out of your hotel room, and attend sessions while the staff are trying to stack up the chairs. And then someone plays some airs on a bagpipe (YMMV).
Or on a cruise, on embarkation day, when you are just getting accustomed to relaxing, and they put the Port Valet [1] form in front of you, bringing to mind all the chaos of disembarkation and airline travel.
One must enthuse as much as possible when the days are good.
[1] You put your packed bags out for baggage handlers on the last night and you expect to see them at your destination’s baggage carousel.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 47.7 ms ] threadI feel this in a very specific way. It's not that I don't have anything to do, it's that there are so many options. There are so many things I want to do on my days off that I get overwhelmed and spend the day thinking which one of my projects to tackle.
In the end I usually just pass the time and not do anything constructive.
Oh, can relate. Work’s the next day, of course it’s a downer. You spent yesterday catching up on necessary stuff you’d deferred in favor of work for five days straight, so didn’t really have an actual break, and now your momentary breather has another damn work day following it, so you feel like starting anything you actually want to do is pointless. You dread night because you’ll be waking too early to the alarm clock. Yeah, it sucks, there’s a reason some cultures have the attitude that anything short of a week isn’t a real break from work.
English just puts spaces between the parts usually, but as I understand it, this is unusual among Germanic languages.
In other words, Sunday is our only true day to rest, the weekday was busy with work and scattered after-work commitments, and Saturday was devoted to a combination of chores and using every last bit of energy you had in the week to enjoy life and friends. So we may try to mentally force ourselves to take a day of rest and limited exertion, which in turn makes it not restful or fulfilling.
It's sort of like when you know you need to go to bed on time so that you can have full energy for a busy tomorrow, it somehow makes your sleep worse knowing that.
Get some stuff out to do a thing you’ve been meaning to? But you just cleaned the house. If you don’t pick it back up today, it’ll sit out all week. Will you still want to do that next weekend, so it’s not so bad it was cluttering things up? Maybe not, that’s far off. Kids or pets will get into it and mess things up. Better not do that.
Maybe really dig into that math book you started last Sunday. Wait, wtf does any of this mean? Ugh, it’s been too long, you’ll need to backtrack… never mind, this is hopeless.
Pick up that long narrative video game you started last month but haven’t put time into since. Forgot the controls, this part’s too hard now, and you don’t remember what was going on anyway.
TV or reading light fiction and watching the hours ‘till work tick down from the mid-teens, it is. Again.
As for the latter, I remember that during the time when I had 4-day week (I work in an European country where parents of children up to certain age can ask for a reduction of their workload and their employer can't refuse it) the Sunday blues was practically nonexistent: I just had two days of work, then free Wednesday to ply with my daughter, and then two more work days that I really enjoyed.
Or on a cruise, on embarkation day, when you are just getting accustomed to relaxing, and they put the Port Valet [1] form in front of you, bringing to mind all the chaos of disembarkation and airline travel.
One must enthuse as much as possible when the days are good.
[1] You put your packed bags out for baggage handlers on the last night and you expect to see them at your destination’s baggage carousel.