Come Monday and you get the blues. I look for excuses of not going to work on almost all Mondays, and more often than not, end up working from home. Actually it starts sprouting up Sunday afternoon, latest by the evening. Add some greys from the skies on Monday morning, and you have a dirty, gloomy concoction of blue-grey tinges that keeps you troubled throughout the day. And a bad start to the week tends to create a bad taste.

With my contrarian style of working and the flexibility at work I generally sit with the code late nights on weekdays and afternoons on weekends, becoming the object of suspicion of colleagues with my short hours at work (Hope my manager doesn't read this...), getting up as late on a weekday as on the weekends, there is no reason I should get depression-filled Monday mornings. But I still get them. Monday is like getting up for the week. A parallel can be drawn between nights and weekends, between dawns and Mondays, between being night owls and flexi-workers.

So anyway, come Monday and you get the blues. There are several remedies to it, the one I usually follow is going out on Sunday evenings also. Well, the popular idea of staying indoors Sundays helps me because I find lesser traffic on roads and lesser congestions at restaurants and theatres. And going out on Sunday evenings leaves lesser time to worry about the next morning.

Another cure I discovered this Monday, though it was practised by female colleagues from my first job and I never realised it, was to go out shopping on weekends and wear the loot to work on Monday. Okay that can be a girly thing to do but I really felt lesser impact this and the previous Monday. I could beat the blues by donning new pairs of denim blues (and new shirts too) to office, and receiving compliments. However, this leaves me in a lurch for the next 50 weeks; two pairs of jeans is almost the upper limit I buy in year.

Going out for lunch on Mondays can be of help too. This is inspired by another friend; she doesn't eat out on the weekends, but makes sure she doesn't have dinner cooked at home on Mondays. For me, good food anyway serves as an anti-depressant at all times. And the best part is that unlike clothes, I do not have a quota on eating out.

Talking of melancholy and food, I am already feeling sad about not being able to finish this piece on Monday, and about getting up five hours later and going to work. Let me visit the kitchen and eat something before I retire. By then, you let me know how do you deal with your Monday blues.

[Photo courtesy: Vicky Walsh]