Caught a great post over at Retirement: A Full-Time Job with the title, Thank God It’s Monday. Initially, I thought it was a typo – we all know the saying is, “Thank God it’s Friday!

Upon closer inspection I realized exactly what the author meant. Like her, I dread Monday mornings to the point that I literally get depressed on Sunday evenings. If you were to track my energy levels, and my mood, from Friday night to Sunday night it would show a steady decline leading up to Monday morning. I hope to change that before too long!

My weekends seem to get shorter and shorter, and as my kids grow older I find myself trying to cram more and more into them. As a result, I find myself exhausted on Sunday evenings and joke to the family that I have to go back to work to rest. But that’s just it – I don’t rest. I get no downtime, no time to pursue other things that are important to me. My family time suffers, and after keeping this schedule for weeks on end, burnout is inevitable.

I can’t wait until I reach semi-retirement and feel just as enthused about Monday mornings as I do about Friday mornings. Until then, here are a few strategies I use to reduce the Sunday night dread:

• Find full-time work doing something you truly love. I know it sounds cliche, but it really works. The times when I have felt passionate about my Monday-Friday mission have been some of the happiest “work” memories I have.
• Find your passion outside the office. A few years ago I was really into coaching youth sports. Probably because I used to want to be a high school coach. But I took a different path in my career, so I made time to volunteer as a coach for my kids’ sports teams.
• Ask your boss for a flexible schedule. One of my favorite books, The 4-Hour Workweek, advocates this strategy as a way to start slowly unplugging from the office. It might be as simple as asking to work half-days from home on Fridays to beat the commute, or going to a 9/80 work shedule where you are off every other Friday.

Photo by biofriendly

Many books have been written on the rat race, and those who run it. I don’t know about you, but I resent being called a rat, even if I am a willing participant in the race. You see, I am an average guy with a wife, a couple kids and a dog. I have mouths to feed. I have not inherited a dime from family. My parents are broke and could not afford to give me money if they wanted to. That does not mean I don’t get fed up with the race, but I don’t like being called a rat.

Every morning I wake up to the sound of a screeching alarm clock, make the dreaded walk from my bed to my shower, get dressed, grab a protein bar and drive to the office to slave away in an office for nine hours making a profit for the company. Every two weeks I get a paycheck, and even less frequently, a pat on the back. It is not my passion, nor my calling, but with the aforementioned mouths to feed I go about it with as much pride as I can. What about that makes me a rat?

Dictionary.com defines the term rat race as:

Any exhausting, unremitting, and usually competitive activity or routine, esp. a pressured urban working life spent trying to get ahead with little time left for leisure, contemplation, etc.

Sounds about right.

I know there are those out there who made better choices than we did, financially. There are those who sold a business, or inherited a large sum of money from their parents or grandparents, or saved prodigiously from the time they were 17, rode the market up and cashed out with $700k in equities by the time they were 30. To them I say, congratulations. But don’t look down on those still out there hustling to earn a buck and put food on their table.

So around here you will not find the term “rat race,” well, unless I am ranting about someone else using it. Just because some of us still have to work for a living does not mean we are less intelligent, or value our freedom any less than those who have managed to escape.

Photo by CSatch