How to Feel Better on a Monday

No matter how much I love my job, sometimes I dread Mondays.

But if you've got to work, you've got to work, so when I sense a Monday Malaise coming on I go out and buy a bunch of CDs during the weekend. They don't have to be new CDs, or expensive, or even promising in any way, as long as I can wake up on Monday morning and say: today I will listen to all that music while I work. Yay!

Sometimes the CDs end up being delightful surprises, or they might be totally awful. Either way I at least have the ANTICIPATION of something, and that alone is enough to get me crawling off the mattress.

The thing is, if I'd known today that I'd be listening to Deborah Harry's new CD ("Necessary Evil"), I would have just shot myself instead. I've never been impressed with Harry's songwriting ability -- her lyrics tend to be a string of awful cliches and forced rhymes just BARELY mangled into a song -- but...well, I admire her individuality and her style. So I keep giving her chances to redeem herself. Plus the CD was cheap.

Cheap, yes, but total garbage too: the usual bad Harry lyrics dressed up with cut-rate "whizzzz booop" Attention Deficit Disorder production, in an attempt to sell her as Gwen Stefani. Now, I'm not a big fan of Stefani, but at least she has energy and can sell the lyrics that other people put in her mouth. Nobody could sell Harry's lyrics, least of all a tired-sounding lady who probably imagines herself to be a lightbulb or an ironing board when her medication wears off.

I also bought Carolyn Mark's latest ("Nothing Is Free"), because I understand she's part of the Vancouver scene that produced Hank & Lily. Listening to her CD I realized once and for all that I just don't like country music. I can't help it. The style bugs me.

BONUS: How to feel better on any weekday EXCEPT Monday:

When you get out of bed in the morning, think "oh no, it's Monday!" Mope around, because you HATE Mondays. On your way to work, complain endlessly about Mondays and wish feverishly that it were any other day.

Then, when you get to your computer, look at your desktop calendar and say "holy cow...it isn't Monday at all!"

Enjoy the sense of grateful happiness that floods through you. Later in the day, when you start to feel bad again, remember how silly you were, confusing your days like that, and remember how bad you felt when you thought it was Monday. You'll feel good again. Repeat as necessary.