Eryn Campbell
Eryn Campbell (46) is in her 6th year studying to be a Clinical Psychologist. She's writing her masters thesis, and she's a teaching assistant for subjects like Positive Psychology and Mauri Ora psychology. Next week, she starts her clinical placement for 2 days a week, as
she nears completion of her training.
"I have 3 flatmates. Nico (28) and I have been study buddies since 2014, Annabel (23), whom we met in class, and David (22), who is one of Annabel's childhood friends. My cat, Maya, is 11 years old and a little sweetheart. She has loved having me home over the past 3 months and is seldom further than a metre away from me. I'm worried she's going to suffer from separation anxiety when life gets back to normal in a couple of weeks.
Sunday is no alarm day, so I wake whenever I've had enough sleep. This is sometimes 6 ish sometimes 10 ish. For the other six days my life is dictated by my diary from 8 am to 8 pm, and there's always something to be working on. No-alarm-Sunday lets my body catch up, and reminds me when I do wake up that Sunday is a blank slate day - nothing on the to do list at all. That's a rule I mostly stick to, unless something unforeseen happens during the week that drastically throws my schedule off.
I have chronic back pain so the first thing every morning is painkillers, then I stay in bed for a loving kindness meditation to start the day. Having a blank slate day means checking out what the weather is doing, checking in to see how I'm feeling (physically) and deciding if there is a specific mission for the day.
I spend a lot of time talking during the week, so Sunday silence is bliss. I put my phone on do not disturb, and indulge in my guilty pleasure - watching Trump's latest atrocities on CNN (I include Trump and America in my loving kindness meditations - if anyone needs it they do). I also catch up on the weekly satire by Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers.
Coffee is needed as soon as I get out of bed after meditating; breakfast happens whenever I feel hungry. It's normally a brunch more than a breakfast. If I'm feeling lazy it's cereal and yoghurt, and if I'm hungry I have a mushroom omelette or porridge. If there is left over cake, which there often is in our house, that's me sorted. The whole house is normally home on a Sunday, so it's a nice time to catch up on everyone's week. But mostly I like to just be alone, just me and Maya. Over lockdown we had the three of us working from home, so we all had to set up offices in our bedrooms for privacy. Oddly enough we saw less of each other.
While Saturday is the clean sheets, clean hair, clean PJ trifecta, Sundays are PJ days, so can spend all day lounging. I do not go to the gym on Sundays, and don't normally make plans to meet up with anyone, Sunday is my time. I find if I don't get a chance to just sit and be every week I start to get grouchy. The rest of my week is so hectic and demanding that I don't want to have any obligation to be anywhere with anyone and any time. I normally have a couple of projects on the go. At the moment I am knitting blue and white striped socks and making paper lanterns, so I normally take some time to do creative somethings. I also sketch and play with beading and painting. I don't normally bother with lunch, and dinner is pretty early on a Sunday (around 6), so I can chill and get my game face on for the following week. Working on my masters, reading psychology books, planning lessons are all strictly forbidden on Sundays.
On Sunday I relax the dietary rules a bit, hence cake for breakfast, and dinner is often just an omelette or scrambled eggs. Very occasionally Sunday is Big Mac day, but since finding out I have high blood pressure and cholesterol junk food has been off the menu. I haven't really missed it. Every now and then, that craving for the weird Big Mac sauce rears its head. But now I just have the burger, not the chips and drink and sundae that used to accompany it. During the week I have planned meals and know exactly what I am going to have, so Sunday surprises let me get a bit gung-ho on dinners. Last Sunday I think I had garlic prawns with linguine and peas.
[In our household] we all cook separately for the most part. We have flat cleaning day once a month, and then we go for a meal together afterwards, or occasionally we make a flat dinner, which is nice. We all have quite different tastes in food, I like spices and heat and flavour, and I'm not really into noodles or mashed potatoes with every meal.
What kind of tone do you set for your Sunday evenings? Do you try to get ready for Monday with any steps? After dinner I sit down and go over the diary for next week, making sure I've scheduled everything that needs to get done. I make sure I have professional clothes ready for uni and placement. Sadly PJ's are frowned upon. I speak to my Mum every night. After spending so much time on Zoom I started getting tooth envy seeing how white everyone else's teeth were compared to mine. So the Sunday face mask ritual now has a tooth whitening component. I don't usually wear makeup, but I do like to put on a clay mask Sunday night. It just makes me feel ready to present myself in public somehow. There is generally a bit of pottering at this stage, tidying my desk, putting books away, packing up any crafting type stuff I've strewn around during the day.
Bedtime is normally pretty early. By 8 pm my back is normally pretty sore, and that signals the end of the "working" day for me. I watch movies, or read a book and am generally asleep by 10 pm. I usually sleep pretty well. Before lockdown I found that I was napping for an hour or two most afternoons. Over lockdown that stopped. I'm not really sure why, but I didn't feel sleepy in the afternoons any more.
Writing this has made me realise that I intentionally focus more on wellbeing during the week - making sure I stretch and meditate and move and drink water and eat well - than I do on a Sunday. I think because in my mind it is literally a blank page that even my wellbeing routines get shunted off as somehow being "work" that doesn't need to be done. And I suppose that's actually right. During the week there are times when I need to clear my mind of one task and ready it for another, completely different one, quickly. Or I need to do some mindfulness to sort my back pain out. Because Sunday is so stress free, I don't feel the need to do anything else to increase wellbeing, everything is just the way I want it to be."
she nears completion of her training.
"I have 3 flatmates. Nico (28) and I have been study buddies since 2014, Annabel (23), whom we met in class, and David (22), who is one of Annabel's childhood friends. My cat, Maya, is 11 years old and a little sweetheart. She has loved having me home over the past 3 months and is seldom further than a metre away from me. I'm worried she's going to suffer from separation anxiety when life gets back to normal in a couple of weeks.
Sunday is no alarm day, so I wake whenever I've had enough sleep. This is sometimes 6 ish sometimes 10 ish. For the other six days my life is dictated by my diary from 8 am to 8 pm, and there's always something to be working on. No-alarm-Sunday lets my body catch up, and reminds me when I do wake up that Sunday is a blank slate day - nothing on the to do list at all. That's a rule I mostly stick to, unless something unforeseen happens during the week that drastically throws my schedule off.
I have chronic back pain so the first thing every morning is painkillers, then I stay in bed for a loving kindness meditation to start the day. Having a blank slate day means checking out what the weather is doing, checking in to see how I'm feeling (physically) and deciding if there is a specific mission for the day.
I spend a lot of time talking during the week, so Sunday silence is bliss. I put my phone on do not disturb, and indulge in my guilty pleasure - watching Trump's latest atrocities on CNN (I include Trump and America in my loving kindness meditations - if anyone needs it they do). I also catch up on the weekly satire by Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers.
Coffee is needed as soon as I get out of bed after meditating; breakfast happens whenever I feel hungry. It's normally a brunch more than a breakfast. If I'm feeling lazy it's cereal and yoghurt, and if I'm hungry I have a mushroom omelette or porridge. If there is left over cake, which there often is in our house, that's me sorted. The whole house is normally home on a Sunday, so it's a nice time to catch up on everyone's week. But mostly I like to just be alone, just me and Maya. Over lockdown we had the three of us working from home, so we all had to set up offices in our bedrooms for privacy. Oddly enough we saw less of each other.
While Saturday is the clean sheets, clean hair, clean PJ trifecta, Sundays are PJ days, so can spend all day lounging. I do not go to the gym on Sundays, and don't normally make plans to meet up with anyone, Sunday is my time. I find if I don't get a chance to just sit and be every week I start to get grouchy. The rest of my week is so hectic and demanding that I don't want to have any obligation to be anywhere with anyone and any time. I normally have a couple of projects on the go. At the moment I am knitting blue and white striped socks and making paper lanterns, so I normally take some time to do creative somethings. I also sketch and play with beading and painting. I don't normally bother with lunch, and dinner is pretty early on a Sunday (around 6), so I can chill and get my game face on for the following week. Working on my masters, reading psychology books, planning lessons are all strictly forbidden on Sundays.
On Sunday I relax the dietary rules a bit, hence cake for breakfast, and dinner is often just an omelette or scrambled eggs. Very occasionally Sunday is Big Mac day, but since finding out I have high blood pressure and cholesterol junk food has been off the menu. I haven't really missed it. Every now and then, that craving for the weird Big Mac sauce rears its head. But now I just have the burger, not the chips and drink and sundae that used to accompany it. During the week I have planned meals and know exactly what I am going to have, so Sunday surprises let me get a bit gung-ho on dinners. Last Sunday I think I had garlic prawns with linguine and peas.
[In our household] we all cook separately for the most part. We have flat cleaning day once a month, and then we go for a meal together afterwards, or occasionally we make a flat dinner, which is nice. We all have quite different tastes in food, I like spices and heat and flavour, and I'm not really into noodles or mashed potatoes with every meal.
What kind of tone do you set for your Sunday evenings? Do you try to get ready for Monday with any steps? After dinner I sit down and go over the diary for next week, making sure I've scheduled everything that needs to get done. I make sure I have professional clothes ready for uni and placement. Sadly PJ's are frowned upon. I speak to my Mum every night. After spending so much time on Zoom I started getting tooth envy seeing how white everyone else's teeth were compared to mine. So the Sunday face mask ritual now has a tooth whitening component. I don't usually wear makeup, but I do like to put on a clay mask Sunday night. It just makes me feel ready to present myself in public somehow. There is generally a bit of pottering at this stage, tidying my desk, putting books away, packing up any crafting type stuff I've strewn around during the day.
Bedtime is normally pretty early. By 8 pm my back is normally pretty sore, and that signals the end of the "working" day for me. I watch movies, or read a book and am generally asleep by 10 pm. I usually sleep pretty well. Before lockdown I found that I was napping for an hour or two most afternoons. Over lockdown that stopped. I'm not really sure why, but I didn't feel sleepy in the afternoons any more.
Writing this has made me realise that I intentionally focus more on wellbeing during the week - making sure I stretch and meditate and move and drink water and eat well - than I do on a Sunday. I think because in my mind it is literally a blank page that even my wellbeing routines get shunted off as somehow being "work" that doesn't need to be done. And I suppose that's actually right. During the week there are times when I need to clear my mind of one task and ready it for another, completely different one, quickly. Or I need to do some mindfulness to sort my back pain out. Because Sunday is so stress free, I don't feel the need to do anything else to increase wellbeing, everything is just the way I want it to be."