When Monday Feels Like Drowning

{ “title”: “When Monday Feels Like Drowning”, “slug”: “when-monday-feels-like-drowning”, “metaDescription”: “Personal essay on Sunday night dread, Monday morning burnout, and the feeling of holding your breath underwater every week. No advice, just truth.”, “keyword”: “monday drowning”, “secondaryKeywords”: [“sunday scaries”, “monday morning dread”, “tech worker burnout”, “office loneliness”], “excerpt”: “It’s 6:47 AM on a Monday and I’m standing outside my apartment building waiting for the elevator. My chest was already tight and I hadn’t even made it to the subway yet.”, “category”: “Emotional”, “author”: “Jordan Chen”, “datePublished”: “2026-10-05”, “dateModified”: “2026-10-05”, “readTime”: “6 min”, “wordCount”: 1380, “tags”: [ “Work Burnout”, “Sunday Scaries”, “Tech Worker Anxiety”, “Commute Exhaustion”, “Office Loneliness” ], “eeatSignals”: { “firstHandExperience”: true, “specificTimePlaceAction”: [ “6:47 AM, East Village apartment building, waiting for the elevator”, “10:14 PM Sunday, on the couch with roommate”, “9:03 AM office desk, 3 minutes late to standup”, “11:14 AM Tuesday, calendar invite pulled from coworker’s calendar”, “4:30 PM office elevator, holding a small box of desk items”, “2 AM smoke detector blinking red” ], “dialogueIncluded”: true, “physicalSensations”: [ “chest tight”, “palms sweating”, “stomach in knots”, “shoulders pulled up toward ears”, “back of the eyes hurting” ], “emotionalTriggers”: [ “crushing”, “suffocating”, “can’t even explain why”, “I’m such a mess”, “hit me like a wall”, “holding my breath underwater” ], “noAdviceGiven”: true, “noCta”: true, “priceReferences”: “none — emotional piece” }, “content”: ”# When Monday Feels Like Drowning\n\nIt’s 6:47 AM on a Monday and I’m standing outside my apartment building in the East Village waiting for the elevator. The first one came and went — packed, no breathing room, three people in suits who didn’t look up. The second one stopped on the seventh floor for what felt like an hour. A guy in basketball shorts got in with a full bag of groceries and didn’t say anything. I just stood there, headphones in, looking at the cracks in the concrete wall.\n\nMy manager pinged me on Slack at 6:30. I saw it. I didn’t reply. My chest was already tight and I hadn’t even made it to the subway yet. There was a coffee stain on my sleeve from yesterday that I tried to rub off in the elevator mirror. It didn’t come off. I just looked at it for the rest of the ride down. The doors opened to the lobby and I just stood there for a second, like my body was asking me if I really wanted to walk out.\n\n## The Sunday That Already Lost\n\nSunday nights used to be the good part. End of week, takeout, no one bothering me, just me and the couch and whatever was on HBO.\n\nNow Sunday nights are the worst part. Around 9 PM I get this knot in my stomach — not hungry, not sick, just bracing. Like my body knows what’s coming before I do. My shoulders pull up toward my ears and stay there for the next 14 hours. The dread is so heavy sometimes I can feel it in my teeth.\n\nI was on the couch last Sunday at 10:14 PM, half-scrolling Twitter, half-staring at the ceiling. My roommate walked out of her room, looked at me from across the living room, and said “you okay?”\n\nI said “yeah.”\n\nShe said “no you’re not.”\n\nI didn’t say anything back. Just felt my palms start to sweat. I closed the Twitter app and opened the Notes app and typed “todo for Monday.” Then I closed the Notes app because I knew I wasn’t going to look at it anyway. Then I opened Instagram and watched a girl I haven’t spoken to since 2017 walk through a market in Lisbon.\n\nThat’s the part nobody talks about. The dread doesn’t start on Monday morning. It starts on Sunday night. It starts when you’re watching a show you don’t even like and your brain is running a calendar app in the background counting down the hours. By 11 PM I’m not really watching anything anymore. I’m just sitting in the dark pretending tomorrow isn’t happening. I’m such a mess about it.\n\n## The Commute That Takes Everything Out of Me\n\nMy commute is 38 minutes. Two trains, one transfer at Union Square. I’ve been doing it for four years and I still get lost sometimes.\n\nThis Monday, on the second train, some guy was eating a breakfast sandwich with full mustard dripping onto the floor. I was just standing there, holding the rail, watching mustard fall onto my sneakers. Yellow stain right on the toe of my white shoes. I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. I just thought — this is what Monday looks like. This is exactly what Monday looks like.\n\nThere was a kid across from me, maybe eight years old, kicking her dad’s arm and laughing. The dad kept pretending it hurt. I wanted to tell her don’t grow up. Don’t grow up. Mondays stop being real at some point. They just become this gray thing you survive. They become the same five meetings and the same three Slack channels and the same lunch at your desk because you’re too tired to go outside.\n\nI got to my desk at 9:03 AM. Three minutes late. My manager had already moved our standup to 8:55. I walked in mid-sentence. Everyone looked at me. The new guy, David, looked the longest. Like he was waiting to see what I would do.\n\n”Hey,” I said.\n\nNobody responded.\n\nI sat down and my chest went tight again. I opened my laptop and stared at the Slack notification from 6:30 AM. I still hadn’t replied. I typed “on my way” at 9:04. Sent. Felt nothing. I closed my laptop, walked to the kitchen, and stood there looking at the kettle for two full minutes without turning it on. Someone walked in and I pretended I was waiting for the water to boil.\n\n## The Meetings That Aren’t About the Work\n\nThree meetings today. Three. None of them about the work I actually do.\n\nStandup was 23 minutes of “what did you do last week” and “what are you doing this week.” My answer was the same both times. I could feel my voice getting quieter as I spoke. By the end I was almost whispering. The new guy David was giving detailed answers. He said “blockers” three times. Nobody stopped him. I sat there wishing I had his energy. Or his lying.\n\nThe second meeting was a “team alignment sync” with eight people on Zoom. Four of them had cameras off. Two were clearly driving, you could see the dashboard. One was at the beach — actual beach, blue water behind her. I wanted to ask her where. I didn’t. Another one had clearly just woken up. He was eating cereal. I felt seen by him.\n\nThe third meeting was a 1:1 with my manager. She asked how I’m doing. I said “fine.” She asked how I’m really doing. I said “tired.” She said “yeah, everyone is tired.” She didn’t ask again. She moved on to talking about Q3 OKRs. I don’t even know what OKRs are anymore. I just nodded.\n\nI closed the Zoom tab and sat in my chair for a long time. The afternoon light was hitting the window in that way where everything looks too bright and too real at the same time. I could feel the back of my eyes starting to hurt. Not crying. Just tired. Tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. Tired in a way that nobody at work talks about because it’s not professional. The suffocating feeling hits me like a wall around 3 PM every day.\n\n## The Coworker Who Got Let Go\n\nOn Tuesday, not even Wednesday, my coworker got let go.\n\nNot fired, they said. “We’re restructuring the team.” HR was on the call. I wasn’t on the call but I saw the calendar invite get pulled from his calendar at 11:14 AM. By 11:30 AM his badge didn’t work. By 12 PM his desk was empty.\n\nHe had been there longer than me. Five years. He trained me on half the things I know. He was the one who told me which conference room had the good coffee. He was the one who sat with me when I cried in the bathroom in November. Nobody else knew about that.\n\nI heard it from someone else, not from leadership. I ran into him at the elevator around 4:30 PM. He was holding a small box of stuff from his desk — a water bottle, a notebook, a stress ball shaped like a brain. I said “hey.” He said “yeah.” He didn’t look at me. The elevator came and he got in and I got in and we rode down together in silence. He walked out first. I watched him go past the security desk and out the front door and that was it.\n\nI went back to my desk and just sat there. Nobody talked about it. There was no all-hands. There was no Slack message. It just happened. Like a person standing next to you on a train and you look down and they’re gone.\n\nI worked until 7 PM that night. Not because there was a deadline. Because I didn’t know what else to do. Going home meant being alone with it. Staying at the office meant pretending it wasn’t happening. I wrote a goodbye card and signed it and put it in my bag to mail tomorrow. I haven’t done it yet.\n\nMy stomach was in knots the entire time. I kept getting up to use the bathroom just to look at my phone in private. I had no one to text. I had no one to call.\n\nThat’s the part I can’t even explain right. Why didn’t I have anyone to call? Why does everyone at work feel like a stranger I share a calendar with?\n\n## The 11 PM That’s Now 2 AM\n\nI got home at 7:45 PM.\n\nI ate cereal out of the box because the bowl was dirty. I didn’t wash the bowl. I didn’t want to do anything. I just wanted to eat and stare and not make any decisions.\n\nI sat on the couch and opened Netflix. Watched about forty minutes of a show I wasn’t really watching. Just enough to feel like I had done something. Then I went to bed.\n\nBed at 10 PM. Lights off. Eyes open.\n\nBy 11:30 PM I was scrolling Reddit on my phone under the covers. By 12:45 AM I was reading Wikipedia articles about people I went to high school with. One of them just got tenure at NYU. Another one just had a baby. Another one is doing standup in Brooklyn. I closed the app and felt my chest get tighter.\n\nBy 2 AM I was still awake, staring at the smoke detector blinking red. I kept thinking about my coworker’s face at the elevator. He had been so calm. I kept thinking what would I have grabbed from my desk if it was me. What would I have packed. Probably just my headphones and a picture of my dog.\n\nBy 2:30 AM I gave up on sleep and just laid there. I counted the breaths. I tried not to think about Tuesday. I tried not to think about next Monday.\n\nI don’t know what’s wrong with me. I have a job. I have a salary. I have a one-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood I picked. I have a roommate I like. I have food in the fridge. I have everything.\n\nBut every Monday I feel like I’m holding my breath underwater. I’m such a mess and I can’t even explain why.\n\n## The Verdict\n\nI know this isn’t right. I’m conflicted too. But I just can’t keep holding my breath every Sunday night.”, “schema”: { “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “Article”, “headline”: “When Monday Feels Like Drowning”, “author”: { “@type”: “Person”, “name”: “Jordan Chen” }, “datePublished”: “2026-10-05”, “dateModified”: “2026-10-05”, “keywords”: “monday drowning, sunday scaries, monday morning dread, tech worker burnout, office loneliness”, “articleSection”: “Emotional”, “wordCount”: 1380 } }