Magical Monday

One of the beautiful things about a blog is that there are no restrictions. No deadlines. No word lengths. No subject limits. No grammar or punctuation police. It is like open season for the writer.

One of the scariest things about blogs is that there are no restrictions.

From my perspective, that is a “good” scary. I don’t like people telling me what to do, how to do it, what I should write, how I should write, how long my piece should be, or how short. I don’t like people telling me something is a sentence fragment, or that I have used bad grammar. I KNOW what a sentence is and what good grammar is. If I choose to break the rules, so be it!

I like my blog pieces to be somewhat structured, or at least to have a theme. I am not really into stream of consciousness writing, which blogs seem to invite. But, at times, I find that if I just “let go” and write whatever, I go in interesting directions, to places I hadn’t planned, and talk about things I didn’t know I even wanted to talk about.

I heard on NPR last night that yesterday was the “Most Depressed” day of the year. Someone has figured out – scientifically (but I am not sure what that means in this case, and probably don’t want to know!) – that more people are “depressed” on the last Monday in January than on any other day of the year. According to the report, “Blue Monday” was selected as the pivotal point where you have Christmas bills all coming due; you realize that all of those grandiose New Year’s resolutions are never going to come to fruition; the weather is cold, dark, and snowy (although I would think that depends on where you live); and it is a Monday (statistically the most depressing day of the week).

Personally, I was not feeling all that depressed yesterday. In fact, I was feeling rather fine.

I do find this time of the year to be heavy and sad and depressing. That whole dark, cold “Gloom Period” thing going on. But I find it better not to dwell on the negatives (for too long!) and to focus instead on the positives. On what IS going right. And on what I can do to make things better.

One thing that can make things better (besides hugging your kids more often!) is to do something totally for yourself. I know, I know, alarm bells go off in my mind, too. Doing something for oneself is synonymous with being selfish. This truism only holds true if you are a woman, however. I cannot tell you how many times men in my life have told me that whenever I want to do something for myself I am being “selfish,” while they, meanwhile, spend their entire lives doing whatever the hell they want to do, whenever the hell they want to do it. And somehow that is not selfish. That is normal.

OK, maybe I have been surrounded my whole entire life by men who do not represent true mendom and that “real men” are not this way. I am sure that there are great and wonderful men out there, and it is not my intent to bash men. I have NEVER known a woman, though, who thought I was being selfish because I wanted to do something for myself. In fact, it is usually the women in my life who are encouraging me to do more things for myself. But I stubbornly resist. Because it would be… selfish of me to do these things.

Well, you know what? If we do not do things for ourselves, no one else will. No one else will make time in OUR lives for us to do small, meaningful things. Like take a bubble bath and read a good book. Or go for a long walk or a run. Or go to a movie or a play that WE really want to see.

Last night I went to see Alice Hoffman speak. She spoke about writing, about life, about her life, and about her books. She used the phrase “I think…” a lot. Her talk was energizing, entertaining, interesting, thought-provoking, and moving. It was, in a word (a word I think she would like!)… magical.

Go do something for yourself today.

Go do something magical!