Dreading Monday every Sunday

Sunday evenings can be a heavy time, especially when your body starts bracing for the week before it’s even begun. And the fact that it didn’t use to be this way makes it even more unsettling. What does that feeling in your stomach usually tell you?

I want to pause on something you said, because I think it's important. You said, "I don't think it's me doing anything wrong." That's a really kind thing to say to yourself. A lot of people in your position would have already turned that stomach feeling into "what's wrong with me, why can't I handle this." You didn't do that. You looked at the situation and said, no, the setup is the problem. But I'm curious about the other half of that sentence. "It's just how they set things up." That sounds like a lot of work is happening *to* you, rather than with you. Like you're downstream of decisions you didn't make. Does that feel accurate?

It's not crazy. And it's not your fault. I want you to hear me say that clearly, because you asked for it and you deserve to have it said without any "buts" attached. You're doing what's asked of you. The work is coming from a structural problem — your boss is absorbing commitments from upstairs and passing them down without checking whether the people actually doing the work can hold them. You're tired because the load is genuinely too heavy. That's not a character flaw. That's not a failure of resilience. That's a person responding normally to an abnormal amount of work. And I want to gently flag something you said, because it caught my attention. You asked, "is it crazy that I'm the one who's tired?" As if you needed to double-check with someone else before you were allowed to trust your own exhaustion. That tells me something about the environment you've been in. When a workplace gets bad enough, the people in it start having to argue with themselves about whether they're allowed to feel what they feel. You shouldn't have to convince me that you're tired. You're tired. That's real. You don't need a jury. And then there's the part about your boss not seeing how bad it is. That sounds lonely. Doing all this work and feeling like the person responsible for allocating it doesn't even register that you're at your limit.

I'm glad you said thank you, because I mean it. You don't have to earn that sentence. And the loneliness you're describing — being the only one who sees the load, while everyone else just says "one more thing" — that's its own kind of exhaustion. It's tiring to carry the work, and then it's tiring to carry the knowledge that no one's accounting for it. And I notice you're not making your boss into a villain. He's nice enough. He's just not seeing it. That's actually a hard place to be, because if he were a monster, you could be angry and that would be clean. But it's not anger you're sitting with, it's something closer to disappointment. You keep showing up and doing good work, and the one person whose job it is to notice that you're at capacity... doesn't. So you're left holding this quiet grief of "I used to feel good at this." I want to sit with that for a second, if you're willing. Because I don't think that's just a tired person talking. That's someone who built a sense of themselves around being capable, around doing something well, and now the system has turned that competence into just... a pair of hands that can absorb more. You're not being paid in recognition anymore, you're being paid in "can you take one more thing?" And of course that wears you down. Of course it feels different than it used to. When you say it used to feel like you were good at it — what was that feeling, back then? What was different?

That's a really clear way to put it. You just named something that a lot of people can't quite articulate: the work used to make sense. And now it doesn't. And I think that matters, because when work makes sense — when the targets connect to something you understand, when the team is small enough that you know who's doing what — you can feel competent. You can feel like you're part of a machine that actually does something. And then corporate came in and changed the machine, and nobody asked the people operating it what they thought. So now you're still doing the work, but the work has lost its coherence. It's just... targets. Rules. One more thing, one more thing, one more thing. And none of it adds up to something you recognize anymore. So when you say "it's not really me that changed" — I think that's true. But I also think you're still the one in the body that has to go through it. The system changed, but you're the one feeling the weight of it. And that's a lonely kind of change, because from the outside it might look like you're just doing your job. But inside, something that used to feel like meaning has been hollowed out. Does that land?

You're not losing your mind. I want to be really direct about that because I think you need to hear it from someone who isn't inside the system with you. And I get why it's hard to explain to friends. Because when you say "the workload is insane and nobody asked me what I thought," and they hear "I'm complaining about work" — that's not because they're bad friends. It's because from the outside, work complaints sound like work complaints. They don't see the slow erosion of meaning. They don't see that you went from feeling competent to feeling like a pair of hands absorbing corporate chaos. They don't see that you're grieving something that used to feel like it made sense. So when they say you're whining, what they're really saying is "I can't see what you're describing." And that's a different thing than "you're wrong." But it lands the same way. It makes you feel like you have to justify your own exhaustion to people who should just believe you. I'm curious — when you say you want to feel like you're not losing your mind over this stuff — what does that look like? Is it wanting your friends to understand? Is it wanting your boss to actually see you? Or is it something more internal, like wanting to trust your own perception without needing someone else to confirm it?

I don't think it's naive. Wanting the person who's assigning the work to actually look at the work and see that it's too much — that's not a grand hope. That's the bare minimum of a functional relationship. You're not asking for a miracle. You're asking your boss to do his job. But I want to look at that last part, the "maybe that's naive," because I think that's where the real weight is sitting. You reached for something hopeful — "if he saw it, things would change" — and then you immediately pulled it back and called yourself foolish for hoping. I wonder what that's protecting you from. Because if you decide your hope is naive before he even looks at the list, then when he doesn't see it, it's not a surprise. It's just you being right about yourself. See, I knew it. I'm the one who's crazy for thinking it'd change. That's a really lonely way to live — pre-disappointing yourself so the actual disappointment doesn't catch you off guard. And I think it's connected to everything else we've talked about. You've had to argue with yourself about whether you're allowed to be tired. You've had to justify your exhaustion to friends. So now you're arguing with yourself about whether you're allowed to hope he'll see it. You can't quite trust your own wanting. So here's what I'd like to ask you, and you don't have to have a clean answer: if he did see it — if he looked at the list and said, you're right, this is too much — what would that give you that you don't have right now?

You're right. He won't fix corporate. And if what you needed was for him to reach up and change how the whole thing is built, then yeah — that's not happening, and waiting for it would leave you stuck. So I'm not going to pretend that being seen is a magic wand. It isn't. But I want to gently push back on "what's the difference, really?" because I think there's a big difference, and I think you're underestimating it. The difference isn't whether corporate changes. The difference is whether you have to keep arguing with yourself. Right now, you're the one holding all of this alone — the knowledge that it's too much, that the work lost its meaning, that you didn't do anything wrong. And you're holding it while also having to defend it, to your friends, to yourself, to the part of you that whispers "maybe I'm naive." If he looked at that list and said, "yeah, you're right, this is too much," he wouldn't fix anything. But you wouldn't have to keep being the only witness. You could put the case down for a minute. And I don't think that's nothing. I think that's actually the thing you've been asking for this whole time. Not a solution. Just to not be the only one who knows what's true. Here's what I want you to take with you, because this is where we are. You came in here saying Sunday evenings were the worst, that your stomach was bracing, that it didn't use to be like this. And we found out why. It's not you. The work lost its coherence, the load is too heavy, and you've been carrying the truth of it alone. You trusted your own perception before anyone confirmed it for you. That's not naive. That's the thing that kept you from losing your mind. The Sunday feeling might not go away this week. He might not look at the list. Corporate might pile on another "one more thing." But you know now, in your body, what you said at the start: it's not me doing anything wrong. You don't have to earn the right to that sentence by fixing the system. You just have to keep trusting it. And maybe, when you can, let one person see it with you. Even if it's just me, for now. You don't have to respond to any of that. I just didn't want you to walk out of here still arguing with yourself about whether you're allowed to be tired. You're not crazy. You're not whining. You're not naive. And you're not the only one who sees it anymore.