A Simple Solution for the Sunday Scaries
“The best endings don’t leave us happy. Instead, they produce something richer—a rush of unexpected insight, a fleeting moment of transcendence, the possibility that by discarding what we wanted, we’ve gotten what we need.” Daniel Pink
I read that August is the Sunday scaries of summer, the month we grieve that which ends like coffee on the covered porch, pontoon picnics, and a late-day ski over river glass. I’ll miss morning hikes, rope swings, and wet towels, dock dominoes in the rain, the hot sun, sticky air driving us to mountain water, where we float and soak until our skin shrivels and the stories run dry. I fear the fireworks finale, last notes of David Allen Coe, twinkle lights, tube wars, and dogs on the go—chasing scents over fallen trees in fern-lined forests. Fresh corn and basil with sliced tomatoes. Sourdough. Marina margaritas with the granny floaters—and I don’t mean us—as we fly across big water in an apple red boat jamming to the eighties and stretching our hands to the sky.
These memories are compliments of summer weekends on Lake Blue Ridge, where the revolving door of a foothills fun factory is well-oiled. We plan visits with care and savor every moment people are there, but it never fails that surly Sunday shows up too fast and crashes my party, making me weird and weepy while I watch everyone go.
It was mid-meltdown when my childhood best friend swallowed me up in her signature hug, and said, “You’ve got the Sunday scaries, Hack.” My daughter said the same thing the day she was leaving.
For those of you, like me, who didn’t know what they were, Sunday scaries are the feelings of anxiety and dread that routinely occur on—you got it—Sunday with or without a hangover or talker’s remorse. Typically, Sunday scaries are related to returning to work the next day, but other triggers like to-do lists, upcoming responsibilities, or even saying goodbye may be enough to elicit the uninvited melancholy.
The Sunday scaries, coined circa 2009, are well-documented beyond the Urban Dictionary. Join the almost 800,000 who follow this Sunday Scaries Instagram account, read medical articles like this one from Cleveland Clinic, or simply take it from me, the Sunday funk is real.
The good news is there are plenty of ways to combat the scaries, including: unplugging, getting some exercise, taking a nap, creating a Sunday night routine, starting a project, and more. But for me, there is a single solution that works best—
Learn to see Monday (No Fun Day) as a superhero in disguise.
It was Monday when I stood at the Ace Hardware counter with Sunday scary puffy eyes seeking a color match for some doors that needed repainting. While I waited, I learned all things polyurethane and a bit about model trains. I passed a Rorschach test after recognizing the Holy Mother and baby Jesus in the rings of a swamp Maple, which led Raymond, the other customer at the paint counter, to reveal pictures of his mama’s wrap-around porch, cypress siding affixed to painted plyboard, a shrimp boat he once owned, and a pile of single-shot pistols.
When I left the store an hour and a half later, the noon air hit me hard. I squinted through the sun at the skinny man in baggy pants with a long, gray beard whose path I crossed. He glanced at my gallon of brown paint and said, “Too hot to paint.” I smiled and said only to myself, Oh, I’m painting!
Monday is the start of something new, a mini-chapter within a month.
My Monday painting is a metaphor for whatever it takes to get moving in a positive direction. Memories are made, cherished, and made again, but only with forward momentum. The only memories I’ve ever made by sulking were about sulking, so if repainting doors was the initiative that took me to Ace on Monday and power through the paint counter seminar, then so be it. Bonus: I got a new story out of it, one I won’t forget and found fun to share.
I love what Daniel Pink writes in his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing: “Endings of all kinds—of experiences, projects, semesters, negotiations, stages of life—shape our behavior in four predictable ways. They help us energize. They help us encode. They help us edit. And they help us elevate.”
All of us manage transitions in life, whether Sunday to Monday, summer to fall, one career to the next, kids graduating from college, or aging self and parents. I have a few younger friends who are just starting their families. One told me how sad she was when her child began walking because it meant the crawling stage was already over. I told her to take many pictures and get up for the next and new chapter because it, too, is filled with wonder.
On my last night on Lake Blue Ridge, I sat alone in a lounge chair on the top dock, stared at the stars, and listened to the laughter that slid across the cove like a shot of tequila down a long bar. There is little better than hearing people have a good time.
I filed through a few of my summer funnies—the name game, fried chicken in pouring rain, running from a bear that did the same, and laughing with my Mom about the politically inane—and I decided there would be no more Sunday or August scaries.
Instead, I allowed the flutter of gratitude for a happy and fulfilling summer season on the lake, with weekends renewing lifelong relationships and weekdays deepening my appreciation of Blue Ridge, Georgia's eclectic, funny, and good ways and people. I am elevated and energized as I head back to horse country to start writing that next chapter. I will begin again on Monday ;-).
