Sunday

Sunday, historically, has been my least-favorite day of the week.  It's the day when I'm most likely to collide with some feeling previously stored in a vacuum-packed plastic bag.  It's the day when I'm most likely to feel lonely or sad or grumpy or just broody.

When I was younger, I used to dread the end of the weekend and going back to school on Monday. Weekends were favored over school days, but the final moments of a weekend were marred by the fact that the weekend was skidding to its inevitable end.

Day rarely recommends a book as enthusiastically as she did America The Anxious.  Ironically, I have spent much of my grumpy broody Sunday reading this terrific book on happiness.  I rarely laugh out loud reading a book, but I've done that a couple of times reading this one.  Ruth writes in such a smart and breezy style that I feel like I'm sitting beside my British best friend.  She's funny and self-deprecating and fair minded and in synch with a lot of the things I've been thinking about lately.

But between chapters, I feel lonesome and zapped of energy and teary.

From time to time, I promise myself that I will be proactive about Sundays and plan something happy and energizing, but this has been a packed-full week and I forgot Sunday was coming around the bend until it was suddenly here with nothing on my Sunday To-Do List but to call Roadside Assistance and get the donut installed and the flat tire removed.

Mr. Roadside was barely out of the driveway before I began getting texts to provide feedback. What should I say?  That he arrived and did the deed?  (I'd already told them that on the phone twice when they called.) That he screwed on the bolts with stunning proficiency?  And what if I don't respond with answers to their twenty questions?  Will they refuse to show up next time?  Responding to (or ignoring) feedback requests makes me mildly anxious.

The author of the book, Ruth Whippman, attends a happiness seminar, critiques the hyper-parenting of today's American toddlers, visits Zappo's and other businesses heavy into happiness-training for their employees, interviews a Mormon couple (after reading that religious people are generally happier than non-religious ones and that Mormons are happiest of all), scrutinizes Facebook--all in the quest to figure out who's happy and why.

One of my take-aways is sort of this:

So what if you're depressed or broody or grumpy? We're not in a race to get the most gold stars for Smiley Faces and "likes" on Facebook. Avoid spending too much time on social media (and anything else that makes you think everybody else is happy happy happy) and spend that time instead with a real friend in real life who's, on balance, about as jolly and about as miserable as you are.