[HN Gopher] Sunday Malaise (2015)
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Sunday Malaise (2015)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 15 points
Date : 2023-11-13 08:51 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (francisdiclemente.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (francisdiclemente.com)
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Got drunk yesterday and had some good food. No complaints.
| tomca32 wrote:
| > 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.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| > 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.
| jazzyb wrote:
| As always, the Germans have a word for this feeling:
| Sontagsleere.
| zwieback wrote:
| 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.
| klyrs wrote:
| 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.
| kwyjibo1230 wrote:
| 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.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Tired.
|
| 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.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| 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.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| 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).
| germinalphrase wrote:
| When reducing those hours, do they reduce pay in proportion?
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| 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.
| pohl wrote:
| Laying around in bed listening to Brahms doesn't sound like a
| half bad way to spend a Sunday. I might try that this week.
| dcminter wrote:
| "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
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| 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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