monday starts

I have come to love Mondays. I love the way that they offer a fresh new start for each week, no matter what goals I am facing: more writing, more productivity, more discipline, more "being"... my goals are pretty endless. Mondays give me a chance to make this week count in a new way, towards something different. They inspire me to try again, start again, believe again, in myself and my art. 

Today, I began my Monday with morning pages, and with a breakfast of sliced and buttered Orange Blossom sweet bread and blueberries. Lovely cut flowers in a glass tumbler decorated with bees, and the lighting of my new grapefruit candle joined in as I set out to start my morning right. I want to give this Monday every chance possible to be a great day, a day that sets the tone for a week of happiness to follow. 

Too much pressure put on a single day? Perhaps. But I find that giving myself deadlines is the only thing that causes me to actually achieve my goals and complete my work. Likewise, maybe putting pressure on my Monday - giving it the best fighting chance to achieve what I hope it will - is the most hopeful way to push myself harder and see what new heights I can achieve in relation to my goals for this week. It is like starting a morning fresh, the right way, getting out of the "right side" of the bed. Except that if you get it right, a Monday can stretch to reach a whole week instead of a day.

As September approaches around the corner, I am experiencing a heightened awareness of the passing of time, of the year's end approaching. In July, I was aware of the year's halfway point, but felt optimistic and relaxed about the chance to still make progress toward reaching some of the goals I created at the beginning of 2012. Now I am aware that it is really time to make the year count towards as many of those goals as possible. 

I am not disheartened, I am invigorated. I want to seize the day, the week, the rest of this pivotal year in my life (the year of thirty), and make it count. 

Do you feel the same about Mondays? They have not always been such a joy for me - it is a new touchstone in my beliefs, that the best life a person can live is a life when Mondays can mean a fresh new start and not a dreaded return to a week of misery. Are you living a life of Monday blues or Monday joys?