I know everyone has felt the Monday blues every once and a while. I have too. It feels painful, the monotony of waking up after relaxing for far too short to go into a far too long week of wake up, eat, class, class, workout, study, sleep and repeat. Habitually, your body now decides that it can’t go pass the six hours you normally get (if you’re lucky) even on weekends, and you have to force yourself to regain all those lost hours of sleep. You focus on sleep (good), or on things that distract you from your work (okay-ish) and eventually you decide that you need some "me" time, and you deserve it because you worked sooooooo hard this week. You confuse what you want with what you need to be doing. Most people treat poor innocent Monday as this buzzkill, this thing that only serves as a reminder that the real world ain't all sunshine and rainbows.
BOOM!
Suddenly, you’re old. High school turns from being a few months behind into a few years, and all those days you hated getting up on Monday slowly become something else. Suddenly, you wake up and you find yourself a 100 days away until graduation. Suddenly, years have flown by and you still hate Mondays. Well, I’m here to tell you that it needs to stop.
Mondays are unique because they are such a gut punch. It’s a splash of cold water. It’s a punch to the nose, a kick in the back, a terrified you waking up to loud bangs and people you don’t know giving you 10 seconds to be out in the peeway with bedsheets, and it's the first dive into that cold Lejeune pool at 0-too-damn-early-30 in the morning.
See, I believe that whatever profession you may choose, whether it is the military or the government or the civilian sectors, your job is going to play a very crucial role in who you develop as. You identify with your career and how hard it is and whether or not you like it. This idea of loving your work is crucial, because that is the difference between those who love Mondays, and those who dread them. If you aren’t trying to succeed in life, if you aren’t trying to to be something great, a world innovator, a game changer, then Mondays become monotonous. They become habitual and dreadful and something you wish would disappear.
It’s not, though. It won’t ever go away, and you can either fight this immovable object with pessimism, or you can see it as it is: a blessing.
Do you want to be successful and are willing to work for it? Good, that’s the type of people who usually are. What, what, you're bored? You don't see why you can't have a weekend to yourself? You don't want to put in the work? You want to quit? Fine, be lazy, that's your decision as a grown ass person who understands the consequences. But you still want to be successful? Now that is just bass awkward.
We all know the type, the ones who want to be successful yet all they do is drink and party and dread whatever work they put off until the day of. They want all the results yet put in none of the work. Would you follow that person? Sure, they’d be fun to hang out with, but you resemble, emulate, and develop like the people you surround yourself with. I’d rather be the slowest person in the fastest group. I’d rather be the dumbest person in the smartest room. I’d rather work all day and all night just for a few more dollars and pride than have everything just be given to me.
That’s the worst thing about people who dread Monday, the “coulda, woulda, shoulda” people who make up excuses for themselves. It isn’t due to a lack of capacity to work, it is more of the people who say “Yeah, I could be in your place if I tried. Too bad my—insert excuse here—prevented me from doing so.”
Sure bud. You tell yourself that. But don’t be surprised by the results you don’t see from the work you never put in.
Because, in the end, all of those “coulda, shoulda, wouldas” have nothing, absolutely nothing on those that actually did. A more so, they’re scared, because the ones that did, yeah, they are the ones who eventually change the game. In the words of a far better writer, Mr. James Baldwin, “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”
So rise and grind, and Thank God It’s Monday.
"The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, nor the U.S. Government."
