Delayed Monday Syndrome

Delayed Monday Syndrome© (DMS) is a real thing that I just made up* as a way to explain those crazy weeks when Monday goes swimmingly, only to have another day crash down around your ears in a spectacle of mediocrity.

DMS usually occurs on a Tuesday, but has been known to make random appearances all throughout the week, so don't think that making it past the hump grants any kind of immunity. It does not. Your day can go from "marginally crappy" to "unredeemable without enlarging the broadness of your backside" in less than 5 minutes.

Tuesdays are almost always harder than Mondays to begin with. They're not Monday, so you don't really have a reason for all the dragging, sluggish feelings--sort of like Monday leftovers. And it's not Wednesday, so you don't have that happy, "hump day," half-way to the weekend feeling. It's the forgotten middle child of the early week. And that's a normal Tuesday, so you can imagine how much worse DMS makes things.

An example:


Petunia's** day started with a feeling like this: lazy, worthless woman who can't get out of bed and in to work at a decent hour, thus depriving her hardworking husband of the comfort of a home cooked meal. This is a classic symptom of DMS--the nagging feeling that you left your awesome in your other pants, right next to that tube of chapstick that you ran through the wash resulting in a slightly greasy pair of pants with a suspicious stain you don't want to attempt to explain anyway. However, we all know that one symptom doesn't lead to a diagnosis (otherwise, we'd all be ADHD/OCD/sociopaths with tumors and endocrine disorders... at least, I certainly would be).

Another symptom of DMS is the inability to process minor changes with any semblance of grace or skill, which leads to a heightened emotional awareness that borders on paranoia, with the fervent belief that everyone can see all the flaws of your life like one of those ill-advised lighted make-up mirrors that can turn a confident 29 year old woman into a quivering mess thinking she's only one step removed from the Crypt Keeper and no amount of moisturizer with SPF and eye cream will make her pass for a normal, attractive female... not that I would know anything about that.

But back to Petunia. Less than an hour later, after an uneventful commute where she felt persecuted by the drivers who failed to grasp the concept of merging traffic (it's like a zipper people!!), a frantic search through the crud in her purse looking for the key card to the office so she could climb to the 4th floor only to realize she forgot to take her multi-vitamin and was certain that osteoporosis and cancer were at that very minute creeping into her system, and a phone call that should have been benign, but instead left her feeling like this: useless woman who doesn't understand the basic concepts of modern commerce, thus failing her husband who asked her for help in the first place, because he was busy solving important problems for people with a nationally recognized brand name and thus bringing home ye-olde-bacon so she should stop being a nagging harpy and do things the right way the first time and fix the problems (none of which her darling husband ever said, she just read between the lines--i.e. made stuff up).

A nutritious lunch is passed over in favor of a half-stale bag of mini-marshmallows, where she shamelessly disregards the warning to eat them one at a time.

Sadly, there is as yet no cure for DMS. Hopefully a heightened awareness of the crippling disorder can help suffers identify the early warning signs and ensure that enough butt-broadening substances are near at hand to reduce the likelihood of complete implosion due to the high-pressure suckage at the nougaty center of the DMS day.

In extreme cases, DMS may develop into the more serious PMS (Prolonged Monday Syndrome©) which requires chocolate, salty foods, a tear-jerker movie, an electric blanket, and hopefully some furry beast to snuggle with.

*I even googled it to be sure.

**Names have been changed to protect the identities of the poor, bewildered sufferers of this tragic affliction


Disclaimer: DMS is often confused with the Sneaky Hate Spiral, which Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half was so kind as to inform the world about. Without her research, DMS may have gone undiscovered so trot on over there and tell her how thankful we all are.