When I was still a sweet innocent little boy, I dreaded Mondays.  As bedtime on Sunday evening approached, my stomach would turn into knots.  I couldn’t sleep and I was a nervous wreck.  I dreaded what the next school day will bring. 

When I started to work, I dealt with this anxiety by going to work early on Monday.  By 7AM, I was already in the office.  When people showed up at 9, I was already well into my day.  It gave me a sense of being in control.   Nowadays, I don’t go into work that early anymore.  I’m not as nervous or anxious as I used to be but I can still feel the underlying tension. 

Usually, I’ll check my emails on Sunday nights just to make sure there aren’t any landmines waiting for me the next day.   If problems come up, I just tell myself that’s what work is all about.  That’s why I get paid for – to use my experience, skills and creativity to solve problems.  It becomes a more of a mental chess game.  Is the stress still there?  Of course,  but I have become more adept at compartmentalizing this.   I’m also fortunate to have a good manager this time as well.  I don’t dread Mondays as I have in the past.  I am just suspicious of them.  Maybe over time I’ll grow to love and embrace Mondays. 

I was thinking about all of this an hour ago.  I hate that feeling when the weekend is finally over.  I can’t believe that I’ve had this feeling for Mondays so long.  I guess it’s just another of my quirky little traits that I’ve grown to love gotten used to after all these years. 

Have a great Monday everyone. 

I just know in my next life, I will live in a world of Mondays.  Everyday will be a Monday.  There aren’t any long weekends.   People will be cheerfully telling me, we have a 3 day Monday coming up – isn’t that great!  Although today is Thursday, it just feels like a Monday. 

Today was to be a quiet day so I wanted to work from home and write my reports.  But lo and behold, a construction crew has set up across the street and there are small tractors and dump trucks just below my window.   Even with the windows shut, I can still hear them.  To top it off, the network response at home is slow this morning.  It was tough accessing some of the applications at my company’s site.  I also got an error message “The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax.”  Yes, that was very helpful error message.  

So before I pack my stuff up and head into work, I thought I would share some food porn.

I made this beef chow mein for my dad last week.  He was puzzled why I would take pictures of  my cooking.  “The food is getting cold!”  I added some shitake mushrooms, yao choy, carrots, garlic, spring onions and shallots. 

I haven’t had a lot of success making steamed minced pork.  I tried doing this with dried / preserved mustard leaves.  I wasn’t happy with the texture of the meat although the flavor was ok.  I would give this 2 / 5. 

I accidentally closed my spreadsheet
without saving it thinking it was another one that I had opened up.  Two hours of work gone.  I almost launched my laptop out the
window.  I grabbed my coat and headed out
for a walk to clear my head.  As I was
walking, I remembered that I had cut and pasted the finished chart already to
my presentation.  Thank goodness it’s not
going to be in my critical path.  But I
still have to recreate it though for backup. 

The fresh air helped clear my
head.  I know I can’t work these long hours
and still be productive and sharp the next day. 
I was up till 1:30 last night.  But the output was painfully slow.  My bf called me this morning to wake me
up.  We have this thing since we started
to go out.  Whoever wakes up first calls the
other person.  It took me a while to get
going in the morning.  I rolled around
the bed for awhile, walked downstairs and sat on the couch, turned on the TV, dozed
a bit, walked to the door and retrieve my newspaper while hoping no one in the
hallway will see me in my shorts, read for a bit, read for a bit more, read the
entire newspaper and then I finally showered. 

I see the stock market is acting up again.  Maybe there will be some bargains later in the week.  Any suggestions? 

As my bf’s oldest nephew would say – “that’s a random picture”.