I don’t get paid to cry on Sundays

A spoonie guide to turning dread into softness—even when you’re running on empty

Sunday Softies is my journey to reclaim my life from the dreaded corporate Sunday scaries. Featuring self care, relaxation and anything that brings me joy.

The churning in my stomach was enough to make me sick—stopping me in my tracks, dry heaving in a ball on the couch.

Had I been poisoned? Nope, I just had to go to work tomorrow. So far, I’ve changed jobs a few times in my career. I know it’s time to leave when the Sunday Scaries show—the feeling of intense dread that robs you of your Sunday. It turns the weekend from a 2 day relief of corporate hellscape to one day of delusion and one day of despair.

It usually appears about 6 months in—the point when boredom sets in and the challenges aren’t enough for me. But this time, it was almost immediate. It’s taking every single one of my spoons. The relentless meetings and deadlines and demands. I burned out quickly and furiously this time. It had me worried.

On the rare day that I still had a spoon or two after a torturously long and busy day, I would sit in the shower and let the hot water try to bring me back to life.

But the end of the day is no relief when you have to go back tomorrow. Neither are weekends, and definitely not Sunday. But then it hit me that this is bullshit. I don’t get paid to cry about how hard my day was after 5pm and I sure as hell don’t get paid to be miserable on Sunday. If I’m going to be miserable and ugly cry, I’m going to do it on Monday. I’ve gotten pretty good at navigating spreadsheets while sobbing and tantrum-ing like a toddler.

When the Sunday Scaries would strike, the anxiety would be fierce—I’d get physically stuck. I can’t bring myself to work on my journal or do much of anything. I just sit there with a dinosaur movie blaring on the TV, half watching, half running through the meetings I have coming up the following day. I’ve turned rehearsing my “decline with note” into an Olympic sport—a corporate job can be gruelling, we deserve medals, too.

And so, in my year of the comeback, I’m bringing Sunday back, too.

Here’s my plan to turn the Sunday Scaries into the Sunday Softies and reclaim a piece of my life. The idea is to do things that feel like self care and make me feel supported despite the anxiety and stress and sadness.

3 simple rules for reclaiming my Sunday

1. Keep myself busy. This doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be out and about doing a lot of socialising and adventuring. I don’t have enough spoons for that. But I want to minimise the amount of time I spend mindlessly watching TV because the anxiety has me too stuck to do anything else. The idea is to have a schedule for the day, and follow through with it no matter how I feel.

2. Now, I know what you’re thinking—where do you get the spoons (or the audacity). I’m going to plan 3 versions of a Sunday Softies ritual—high spoons, medium spoons and low spoons. If I have no spoons, then I’ll allow myself to sit in front of the TV and watch the dinosaurs eat people up. Relaxation comes in many forms. I’ll share more about this further down the post.

3. Don’t give myself an option. It’s hard to force yourself to do something, especially when it’s good for you. But it’s even harder to wake up and grind in front of my laptop every day—an endless onslaught of meetings and deadlines and manufactured urgency for things that don’t really matter unless you own most of the company. I do this every day, in varying states of misery and always pretending to be healthy and energetic.

Photo by Jen P. on Unsplash

The spoonie Sunday ritual you didn’t know you needed

Creating a relaxing atmosphere

Since I work from home I basically live at work. Relaxing and switching off can be hard because I never actually physically remove myself from the biggest cause of stress in my life.

So, I need to make it a more relaxing space when I’m not working—with clear signals to my little lizard brain that the lions are taking a nap (they are lazy fuckers, after all) and I’m not being chased by a dinosaur. These things don’t necessarily need to take a lot of energy, but The Prince usually helps me soften in this way. Here’s my plan for doing that:

• Light a candle. Something about candles just instantly feels like relaxation. The scent follows you around the house and the flame, although tiny, feels warming—primal, like renewal. It’s like a signal to my brain that I can relax and slow down a little bit.

• Curate a playlist. Easy relaxing music that either helps me slow down or feels upbeat enough that it puts me in a good mood. I’m not sure which one will work better, so an experiment is in order.

• A soft little nest. Cozy clothes (for when it’s not so blisteringly hot that clothes become the enemy), fluffy socks, my favourite oversized cardigan and a soft blanket. Just something soft and cozy, like a deconstructed pillow fort for a slightly unhinged woman in her 30s.

How do you create a relaxing atmosphere in your home? Let me steal your ideas!

Keeping myself busy

Think of this like a menu—the spoons indicate how much something costs. This entire list has been curated to only include things that feel nourishing, regardless of how many spoons it costs me.

Low Spoons 🥄

(Basically just laying there and letting the world happen around me)

• Watching a new-to-me TV show or movie. Something with drama or true crime is usually where I go. Note that this is different from mindlessly rewatching 2012 for the billionth time (that’s for no spoon days). I also like watching cooking or travel shows, there’s just always been something soothing about that. I miss old school Nigella Lawson, when she used to sneak into her kitchen and eat half her chocolate.

• Watching journal content on YouTube. I might not have the energy to work in my journal but I can still enjoy watching someone else doing it and talking about stationery.

• Listening to poddies. I could be online shopping while I do this, but it’s a low effort way to consume stories or learn something interesting without necessarily pulling all your focus.

If you’ve got a few spoons to spare (aren't you lucky!)—or are miraculously full of energy—here’s how I make the most of them. Subscribe to unlock my medium & high spoon Sunday rituals.

If this hit you in the feels, share it with someone else battling the Sunday Scaries.