How to Enjoy Mondays and Survive Emotional Bankruptcy by Harnessing the Power of the Sun Gods
Using the Sun Gods to Get in Touch With the Week
Problem Tags: Regulation, avoiding dysfunction, avoiding dysregulation, settling back into a rhythm after a move, energy management, fear of change, fear of change as daytime turns to twilight turns to night
(originally memo on this topic was written JANUARY 7, 2024)
I think it’s useful to have strategies for declaring and surviving “emotional bankruptcy.” You’re tired, you’re confused, a lot of things are changing, and you aren’t really sure how to trust your changing emotions or use them as ground. I have found that for situations like this, it can be good to have various systems of stability that you use outside of yourself. You mix things up, and mix up any “codependencies” you have on systems that are not serving you quite right in this moment, on people who might be doing their own stuff or having their own hard time such that you want to co-regulate with them less in order to help them or not lose focus on something very important, or just don’t know what’s going on.
In this post, I describe an experiment in which I used the days of the week as a source of stabilization. By having cycles within each day (trying to do Monday right, trying to do Tuesday right) as per your terms and your own way, the integrated version, not the disintegrated version, is its own “internal system” that does end up making some sense and have some health built in, that you can use it to survive emotional bankruptsy.
HOW IT STARTED
I had a friend tell me that her week gets messed up if she does Sundays wrong. I thought that this is compelling, given that Sunday is important to many people, and ritual is important to even more people! Many people would agree that missing the important restoration day can have consequences for a person’s entire week. Her Sunday ritual included reading, and physical exercise. “An entire book and a hike!” is my paraphrasing of her sentiment, which she is much more in tune with.
A few months later (December 28), I was having a particularly bad Thursday. I’d moved locations just a week ago, on Christmas Eve, and wanted to get into a good sleep schedule. I had tended to wake up between 10:30 and 11:30am for the past ten years, no matter what time zone I am in, and no matter how early I went to bed. My sleep schedule would very quickly relocate to waking up at this time.
For a group chat started by another friend, (a making-things accountability pod, quickly turned into perfectionist’s support group, quickly turned into all three of us wanting to wake up earlier :) ), I’d taken notes about my sleep habits, and noticed that I might not have a great relationship with the mornings, or with the day. I started thinking maybe there is an energetic reason I am skipping it, and why my “hacks,” including getting jetlagged, were not working.
A friend asked me what my relationship to Apollo is, and I said I don’t even know who he is! I got him mixed up with Achilles. But I started reading about Apollo, and thinking that I am quite suspicious of this handsome sun god who seems to be clean and have it easy, strutting around with his lyre and his bow. If I met a man like this in real life, would I trust him? Absolutely not. I’d probably try to fuck him up! I would stress test him! As I was reading about him I was noticing myself being mad at Apollo! Maybe I had too cozy a relationship with Nyx energy of the night!
I started meditating on Apollo, thinking about who in my life is like him, who I like. And I noticed that he is pretty likable! I started playing Rise of the Tomb Raider, because she has a bow, and also does parkour and looks like me a little with the hair and I wanted to envision myself doing parkour. xD
And so on this particularly bad Thursday, I was already thinking about what my relationship to Apollo is. I had a lot of party energy! And wanted to go somewhere and do something. I thought about paying a visit to a nearby homeless organization, but they had really negative reviews about their staff being corrupt on Yelp, and I realized I was tired and just went outside and hung out with the cat and cactuses. I received this text on Friday morning:
“i was going to walk to the homeless organization today for fun” Very Jovian thing to think of! Generosity to downtrodden is one of the archetype’s primary notes
1:06 PM
I told him about the cat and cactuses, and he wrote back
Hmm cats and plants are Venerean!
Frustrated Jove -> transmuted to Venus
Hmmmmmmmmmmm. So then I noticed I don’t know who Jove is, or Thor for Thursday, or really any of them. So then I played a game with myself of looking up what the day of the week’s history, triangulating among the different mythologies and names, and the vibe of the day is supposed to be, and then tuning into that vibe. The night before, I would also think about the next day’s energy, fiddle with it in my mind, so that I could tune into the transition energy, and then wake up with the new day’s energy in mind.
Notes from my journal at the time:
HOW IT IS GOING
It is going better than I thought it would! I had a funny conversation with a friend who was over, just chilling, on Tuesday Jan 2. I was transitioning from MARS energy into the communicative Wednesday energy, and instead of lying to him about where I was at, I looped him into what I was thinking about.
I told him it’s kind of funny that most countries have the 7-day week. You would think there would be more different systems, especially since the days of the week don’t seem to be based on astronomical events (like the month based on the moon, or the year based on the sun).
We investigated it a bit, but it feels like there is still more research to be done on figuring out how the week works!
A good point was made to me, which is that at some point, wouldn’t the weeks be knocked off by a day? At some point? What then (for the energy)?
I think it’s a sound point. For the moon, when there is a full moon, it is literally reflecting a ton of energy back to us from the sun! There are literal energy dynamics there!
But for the days of the week, what *am* I tuning into?
I think there are still reasonable benefits to what I am doing!
It seems cool to be “on a cycle” even if the starting point of the cycle is arbitrary or not tied to anything real. I noticed that I *like* all the energies of the week (this experiment made me like Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which I’d normally hate because they meant waking up too early and not having enough sleep! But a non-sleep-deprived Monday is really really nice!).
I enjoy that I have pre-scheduled permission to go into energies I already like!
On Monday, gentle planning and thinking about different sides of things, and what I want to be doing.
On Tuesday, WAR ENERGY! What am I tackling on?
On Wednesday, communication energy. Many letters and texting friends about what I’d been thinking about earlier in the week! Conflicts from Tuesday, plans from Monday
On Thursday, LIGHTNING ENERGY! Big, expansive, learning something new, doing something new.
On Friday, Venus energy! Confusing and conflicted for many people! Cats, baths, friendship, warm dinner, velvety, intimacy, more velvety heels in the ground writing about personal things
On Saturday, errands! Going deep into a technical thing, or working out deep logistics about something for hours. But still fun, from the tail of venus energy, and oncoming Sunday energy
On Sunday, worship! Can worship the sun, if no church! Let yourself surrender, feel part of everything, gratitude. The “permission to surrender” is new for me and interesting!
Even if it may not be tied to lunar events, there might be something about being a bit “in-sync” with other people. Even if they are not really in-sync with themselves! And have different work schedules! (I am not sure how this works! Or how it would work, if it worked!)
I think for me, it’s been particularly useful right after staying a bit in LA, where the weather patterns are not what I am used to, and creating your own cycles and stability seems like it might be important for a sense of sanity, with the constantly stable weather (I leave open that the weather might have nuances that as a non-local I am not tapping into). In that case, “finding your own stable flows in unknown or chaos” versus “finding your own stable flows in a place where the weather never changes” would be the frame.
I find it kind of cool to have an “ideal in my head” about where the energy for the day should be going, and then troubleshoot when I am misusing the day to hurt myself or others, because I am overwhelmed by the energy and not knowing what to channel it towards.
Another way to troubleshoot is if you feel like “skipping” the entire day - either by racing ahead to the next day, or sleeping the day off.
Current inventory of “mismanagements” that I’d noticed possibly coming up. Work in progress!
On Monday: Everything is mush. Collapsed. Lots of fear, confusion, lack of discernment. Imagine the power of the moon, but no phases of the moon. Just no, one, then two, then three. No delicacy, mystery, unraveling, unfolding. Just everything all at once, but not in a sexy way. All the shades of white and blue fused into an ugly brown. Can be violent coming off of misused Sunday energy.
On Tuesday, WAR ENERGY! Going after the completely wrong thing, picking fights over small things that aren’t even the real war. Ruminating over times you hadn’t stood up for yourself
On Wednesday, communication energy. *extreme* loneliness in disintectated version. Feeling like you have nobody to talk to. Feeling like you are completely empty, like you have nothing to say to anybody. Waiting for *that one* person to reach out to you, that would make you feel better. Feeling really empty inside, like you have nothing to say to anybody that feels like *you*, like you have taken antibiotics but for the soul, all cleared out, no you-shaped bugs inside anymore. Not wanting to do anything with anyone for anything.
Wanting to drink yourself to death with loneliness.On Thursday, LIGHTNING ENERGY! Not being sure how to handle it. Weird sexual aggressions.
On Friday, Venus energy! Confusing and conflicted for many people! Weird jealousies coming up. Weird repressed urges coming out.
On Saturday, errands! Anxiety, not being able to sit still, but also not doing the chores
On Sunday, worship! Weird flashbacks to unresolved existential questions from many years ago. Wanting to just skip the entire thing. Racing ahead to do work for the week, and not taking the day of rest at all. Armageddon spiritual warfare.
