Argh……Tuesdays.
I realized recently that I hate Tuesdays.
It’s not that this is something that just started happening, it’s been going on for a while. It’s only recently that I realized that it truly is Tuesday that has become the problem.
Obviously no particular day of the week can be inherently bad. It’s just that Tuesday has started to become a representation of something else for me.
Something worse…….
It represents to me all the ways in which I have FAILED.
Let me back up a bit…
Anytime I used to create big plans for myself; ways in which I wanted to become healthier, be a better mom, be a better employee, be a better wife, usually began and ended sometime just before January.
Like most people, my goals and aspirations to better myself usually began swirling around in my mind shortly before the New Year. I’d come up with all these diets I was going to try, all these numbers I would hit for my sales goals, all these activities to get my kids signed up for, and majority of them would be attempted, given up on or forgotten about by February.
I was okay with this….. after all, this kind of behavior is totally normal.
There’s a reason they call them “New Years Resolutions”, because people plan them to begin after the New Year and then don’t speak of them or think about them again, usually until the following New Year is right around the corner.
I was no different and I found solace in not being the only failure out there.
About one year ago I decided to start reading every motivational and “self help” book out there. Not because I felt in desperate need of improvement, but mainly because I had a long drive to and from work and wanted audio books to fill my drive time.
Motivational speakers and authors such as Rachel Hollis, Mel Robbins and Jen Sincero were all the rage and you were slipping in the feminism column if you hadn’t picked one up yet.
I’ll admit it, they rocked me to my core.
Ever realize why some animals that grow up in the zoo don’t seem to mind it all that much?
It’s because they don’t know they’re in a cage.
Once I began listening to all the ways to “be my best self”, “chase my dreams”, “reach for the moon” and figured out it’s about time that I wash my face, I suddenly figured out that I’d been living in cage I wasn’t even aware existed and I needed to get OUT.
Don’t get me wrong…. my marriage is not the cage. Having children is not the cage either, these are what give me the most purpose in my life.
The cage is one I had created around myself that had messages scrawled on the walls that said “you cannot smash it at work and at home”, “you cannot randomly make a 180 turn and do something else”, “you cannot take care of yourself and them at the same time”, “you certainly cannot pursue altruistic goals while maintaining a household”.
Once I saw the walls within I was living, I was determined to break them down.
I am not naive, and I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight. I also knew that setting goals for myself once a year and making a negligent effort to attain them during the one month at the start of each year wasn’t going to cut it either.
This was going to have to be something I work on Every. Single. Day.
I was okay with that….. for a while.
Then came Tuesdays.
Tuesdays began to tear me down in ways I never knew possible.
Why Tuesdays? Because they are the 2nd day in the week.
I take time over the weekends to reflect on how my week went. I think about everything that I want to accomplish the following week and I set my alarms early for Monday morning.
Mondays are….. well Mondays.
The kids are coming down from their weekend highs and not quite ready to hit the week full on. Honestly? I’m not really ready either.
Monday’s goals flow easily into Tuesday and by the end of Tuesday?
I feel like a total, complete failure.
Monday didn’t go as I had planned and I didn’t get the “jump start” I was hoping for. I didn’t make the calls I needed to, set the appointments for the kids, sign them up for stuff or plan dinner for the entire week like I said I would.
The kids are usually crabby from waking up a bit earlier the last two days and there’s still 3 more days until the weekend.
3 more days until the weekend…..makes the week feel longer than it did on Sunday.
Garbage pick up in Wednesday morning, so the bin is usually full and stinking in the summer sun. I haven’t finished the laundry, or the grocery shopping, or picked up the yard.
It’s ONLY Tuesday and I already feel….behind.
It’s taken me a while to figure out the nature of my hatred for Tuesdays. I started to think it was because Tuesday night is the night my husband goes to bowling league, something he only started last year and SO deserves to partake in.
I started to question if I was simply becoming depressed and if all this “self help” was actually “self destruction”.
Then I found something while thinking deeply on the subject and it’s impact has had a tremendous effect on my life….
Forgiveness.
Forgiveness to myself for the calls I didn’t make yet. Forgiveness to myself for the mess in the yard. Forgiveness to myself for the laundry in the baskets and the length of my grocery list.
Forgiveness to myself for the dog poo my neighbor stepped in because I cared more about setting up the movie for the kids and the cocktails for our friends than I did about checking the grass.
Forgiveness for falling asleep on the one night my hubby and I could have had some time alone.
Forgiveness to myself…..for when I feel like a failure.
Realizing that Tuesday is just another day and that it is (afterall) only the 2nd day of the week, has brought a cloud off my back that has been hanging there for far too long.
This journey of becoming the best version of me is going to have to be accounted for every day, not just on Mondays and not just at the start of the year.
Knowing and accepting ahead of time that I am going to fail, but that it is in my power to try to do better the next day, is liberating.
Here’s to no more Terrible Tuesdays.
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