Topic: Monday Morning Dread

[Satchmo Distel]

Did you experience Monday morning dread during your schooldays? Do you experience it now, even if you work at home on Mondays (I do!)? At what time on a Sunday would/does it typically start and is it more likely to be linked to anxiety and depression generally?

My answers: I experienced Monday morning dread at a much earlier age than I experienced what I recognize today as clinical depression. If anything, the latter evolved from the former. Like many people, I would connect it to specific TV shows. If I was in a really bad way, it would start as early as the end of Grandstand (Saturday, 5.05pm) but usually it would start around 'Songs Of Praise' (Sunday, 6.40pm) or maybe a few hours earlier, after 'Weekend World' (1pm, Sundays).

Sometimes my worst day of the week was Tuesdays (sadistic gym teacher) so the dread I experienced on Sundays actually got worse on Monday nights.

The inability to get rid of this dread even though I work from home and even enjoy my job has to be some form of reflex that I will have until I retire. It is way beneath my rational mind.

[Jockice]

Tell me about it. I haven't even got a proper job but I have a piece of work to do that is due in tomorrow and haven't even started it yet. It's not going to be an all-nighter but it's going to take me a couple of hours at least. Even though it's something I (sort of) volunteered to do (and I'm not getting paid for it. It may pay off in another way but I can't say for certain yet) I'm actually dreading it. Reminds me of the days when I had a proper job. With deadlines and all that bollocks. I know if I don't get it done now I'll try and put it off again in the morning. So I suppose I'd better say good night to CaB for now. Sleep tight everyonre.

[Shit Good Nose]

Always had it.  It kicks in when I go to bed Saturday night/very early Sunday morning (if I have a late night).

I'm generally okay the rest of the week.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I'm pretty sure mine used to kick in during the opening credits of Last Of The Summer Wine. Ride bath down hill into freshly dug grave.

Always had it.  It kicks in when I go to bed Saturday night/very early Sunday morning (if I have a late night).

I'm generally okay the rest of the week.

Wouldn't that be Sunday morning dread?

[Sherringford Hovis]

Today is always the worst day. So unutterably awful that I can't even dread tomorrow.

[Viero_Berlotti]

The TV show I associate with this as a kid was 'That's Life!' on a Sunday evening. The dread would peak during that week's 'serious' story, sometimes a Childline feature about a School Headmaster abusing kids or the campaign for safer playgrounds that usually had a story about a kid suffering life changing injuries after cracking their skull open after falling from a swing. Then they'd lighten the mood with a feature about a talking dog, but the dread generated by the serious section would linger for the rest of the night.

[Thomas]

One of the homeworlds in Spyro 3 is set in a perpetual evening time. Despite its peaceful environs, for me it encapsulated the melancholy of a Sunday evening - the return from dad's, the bath, the school uniform ready for the morning. The sun low in the bored sky, slipping away with the last fading ribbons of weekend.

[Shit Good Nose]

Wouldn't that be Sunday morning dread?

No, cos it's with me all the time from Saturday night right up until I get to work on Monday.  Just like how when you get to christmas week the festive holiday is basically already over.

[Captain Z]

One of these days I'm going to make an ultimate Sunday night dread TV theme tune megamix.

[Gregory Torso]

Sundays as a child were my introduction to the idea of death. Just grey nothing hours of waking up, no shops open, prayers on TV, homework to get done, everything serious, everything like sucked cardboard, lingering death. An absence of the Lord, sex criminals on the news, deliberately sullen and over-exposed.

As an adult, I don't think I've ever had a strict Mon-Fri job. Never been anyone's Messerschmitt hogshit cot death mascot. It's always been weird timetables doing things within the pockets of the Midlands at illegal angles. Some jobs, every morning, gasping awake in a white scream, pleading not to be waking up in that life again, in that body, in that position. Other jobs, i'm striding out of my domicile hitting cyclists with a 2 ft chunk of wood ready to whisk the assistant manager away for a self-assembled weekend in Tallin.

[Glebe]

It was That's Life! for me. That trumpet theme heralded a grey Monday ahead.

[checkoutgirl]

Songs of Praise was a cultural touchstone for millions of kids as bed was an hour or two away and the weekend was definitely over and that Harry Secombe nightmare programme was the deathknell. You either crammed your homework into your last few minutes of weekend or didn't bother and had small dread about facing the music. Also Songs of Praise was depressingly rubbish and crap so that didn't help. Imagine how bad telly was when Songs of Praise was even considered a viewing option.

Monday dread is as normal as farting in bed or eating cornflakes. If 99% of kids regularly experienced it I wouldn't be surprised. It's the people who say they enjoyed school that you need to watch. Fucking weirdos.

[checkoutgirl]

No, cos it's with me all the time from Saturday night right up until I get to work on Monday.  Just like how when you get to christmas week the festive holiday is basically already over.

Fuck that's bleak. Sunday is bad because you go to bed knowing you can't get up late and telly was rubbish and you might still have homework hanging over you. But you can lie in on Sunday morning and piss about for the rest of the day. Did that not appeal?

[bgmnts]

I got that dread every single evening, sometimes late afternoon. Just knowing I only had a few hours of freedom until I had to get to sleep and get up early in the morning to repeat the whole shite routine again. Friday evening straight after school/work for a few hours was the only time of relative relaxation and happiness, knowing that it was over for a little bit.

I don't think that feeling will ever go away.

[checkoutgirl]

In 2014 I had a job I absolutely despised and let me tell you every week night is Monday dread in that scenario. I lasted 4 months. Imagine 4 months of Monday dread. I think I was going insane after the first few weeks the pressure was that bad.

Monday dread never really goes away. Unless you get paid for a job you like so much you'd do it for free if they stopped paying you. But that's got to be rare.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

It goes away when you retire and days become meaningless, then you can wank potter in a shed or wank knit to your heart's content.

[Twit 2]

Firmly in the dread right now lol

[Dex Sawash]

Fucking love Monday.

[Chedney Honks]

CBA?

NBA.

(Never been arsed.)

[Attila]

I got that dread every single evening, sometimes late afternoon. Just knowing I only had a few hours of freedom until I had to get to sleep and get up early in the morning to repeat the whole shite routine again. Friday evening straight after school/work for a few hours was the only time of relative relaxation and happiness, knowing that it was over for a little bit.

I don't think that feeling will ever go away.

That was school for me, pretty much from the age of 10 til I graduated; I was bullied a lot both at school and on the dreadful bus I had to take clear through high school. So I not only dreaded going to school every day, but from about midday onwards every day in high school I would feel sick from dread of what the boys on my bus were going to do to me that afternoon.

Still have dread/anxiety now; like SGN, it starts Saturday evenings. A lot of it would be alleviated if I didn't have my commute (I have issues with driving here in the UK, and taking the train in is fraught with its own issues due to the poor service), but I'm also overworked to the point of life being pretty pointless. I end up having to work through the weekends just to keep up, especially this past semester. I don't look forward to retirement because I can't afford to retire (I won't have worked here in the UK long enough to get a pension unless I can work until I'm about 80).

I think the only time I had a sort of 'reverse' dread was when I was in university - I geniunely loved those four years, but had to live at home with an abusive father and tosser brother (and a mother who did nothing to stop them), so I actually dreaded weekends and holidays from class because it meant I had to be at home with them.

Gah, that's cheerful, isn't it.

[The Culture Bunker]

Kicks in for me at exactly 4pm, as that's when the weekend is officially over and it's just like any other other evening with work the next day.

The Sunday night at the end of a week off work, those are considerably worse. Despair that all that lovely free time has drained away to be replaced with thoughts of how many emails are waiting for me in a matter of hours.

Working at home the last nine months has maybe helped a bit, but before that, I'd say it was getting worse as I got older, to the point there were some Sunday nights I was maybe sleeping for a hour. The thing is, my job isn't even that bad - presumably I just hate having to work for a living so much.

[Marner and Me]

Kicks in for me at exactly 4pm, as that's when the weekend is officially over and it's just like any other other evening with work the next day.

The Sunday night at the end of a week off work, those are considerably worse. Despair that all that lovely free time has drained away to be replaced with thoughts of how many emails are waiting for me in a matter of hours.

Working at home the last nine months has maybe helped a bit, but before that, I'd say it was getting worse as I got older, to the point there were some Sunday nights I was maybe sleeping for a hour. The thing is, my job isn't even that bad - presumably I just hate having to work for a living so much.

Exactly, no one likes working, but I'd rather work than be homeless.

[The Culture Bunker]

Exactly, no one likes working, but I'd rather work than be homeless.

Oh, of course. Plus I was unemployed for a fair bit when right out of university and it was some of the worst times of my life (not due to how I was treated by them, just the hopelessness of the situation), so even doing this is better for my mental health than being a dolewaller.

[checkoutgirl]

Exactly, no one likes working, but I'd rather work than be homeless.

That's why I rich people love the homeless. Scares the shit out of the people who do the work into continuing to do their jobs for fuck all money.

[DolphinFace]

I remember the Sunday evening dread and its association with various tv programmes. Just the thought of Steve Rider in his sunday knitted jumper presenting dreary Sunday Grandstand is enough to make me feel sick.

Luckily I don't expereince it anymore because I'm doing a job I love. My partner earns three times as much as me and I know she gets the Sunday evening dread because she has to work like an absolute shit. I can see it in her eyes as she slumps into another glass of cheap wine.

The last time I got the sunday dread was in my last job 10 years ago. I had to commute there via an hour long bus journey. That journey could not have lasted long enough. I used to pray for red traffic lights and busy roundabouts. I hated my job and feared my boss so much I don't know how I lasted 12 months there. The dread kicked in sunday afternoon so badly, it actually ruined my life. I'd read CaB to lap up other people's tails of woe just to feel less alone. Cheers guys.