Masterpiece Mondays

Monday should be your best day. Despite our cultural aversion to all things Monday and deep reverence for getting over "hump day" and then prizing Fridays, the first day of the work week should produce the best you've got.

John Steinbeck taught me that, though I'm not sure he meant to. While reading his Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters and seeing his day by day commentary as he began his writing process over the period of eight months, I began noticing a pattern by the time he was about halfway through. He always took Sundays off from his writing, and sometimes he took Saturday off as well. When he got back to the table on Monday morning and penned his warm-up letter to his friend, he had a noticeable bounce in his writing. He was passionate and contemplative. He took time to ponder life and the world, and he cared enough to think about his place in it. His words show a deep devotion to this project, the book "I have always wanted and have worked and prayed to be able to write." He knew why he was doing it and where it fit in the scheme of his life's priorities. He also wrote a lot about other people; he got out of the shell of himself and his work and his problems and simply noticed. All this after a solid day off.

Not so his work at the end of each week. A tired, irritable John Steinbeck drudged himself to the table, willed a couple of pages out of himself, and wrote almost primarily about himself. He writes then of his problems, his fatigue, and the effects of the world on him. He can see little else other than his work and its toll on himself.

Monday was his best day, and it should be yours too if the weekend is your time off. If it's not your best, ask yourself how you're using your weekends. The time off should give us the chance to pause, reflect, laugh, and reconnect. Sometimes it gives us time to get our house in order so that we even feel capable of thought and relaxation. If you're a churchgoer like myself, Sunday allows you the chance to get your spiritual house tidied up a bit as well, with the requisite weekly reminder that you are not God. With that reminder firmly in hand, you're freed to quit worrying about what you can't control and quit attempting to prove to others around you of your sovereignty.

As bad as Mondays are supposed to be, they provide you with the greatest odds for success at whatever it is you do. Your job, your family, your friends, and your passions should all see the best of you at the start of the week, before the week's elephants jump onto your back. Let that be your first thought tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off and you find yourself facing a brand new week once again.