There’s a certain sacred rhythm to Sunday that has nothing to do with rest and everything to do with panic. It’s not a spa day. It’s not quiet reflection with herbal tea and lo-fi beats in the background. No, my Sunday is a controlled burn—an orchestrated unraveling followed by just enough reconstruction to fool myself into thinking I’m a functional adult again. This is my weekly reset.
And look, I know I make it sound dramatic—and it is. But it’s also the one thing keeping my week from sliding into full gremlin-mode. By Sunday evening, my brain is one big tangled knot of missed messages, forgotten tasks, clutter I’ve chosen to ignore, and half-finished ideas I thought I’d definitely get back to. I can’t move forward until I exorcise all of it. That’s the job. That’s the ritual.
So first: I make time to think. Not scroll, not half-listen to a podcast while reorganizing my sock drawer, not write a list while watching Netflix—think. I sit with the noise, take it all in, and try to sort out what part of the chaos is real and what part is just leftover anxiety vibes from the week before. This isn’t meditation. This is strategy. It’s damage control. It’s mental triage in pajamas.
Then comes the external reset—the kind people can see. I do my planning stream every Sunday, and I treat it like a sacred offering to whatever gods might grant me a week that doesn’t turn into a garbage fire by Tuesday. It’s not always pretty. Sometimes it’s just me yelling at my planner while trying to decode a cryptic note I wrote in a fugue state on Wednesday (“do the thing???”—what thing???) But there’s comfort in it. In the structure. In showing up for myself in a public, accountable way. In saying, “Hey, future me—here’s a map. You’re still going to get lost, but at least you’ll have snacks.”
I brain dump like it’s a competitive sport. I clean digital clutter with the desperate energy of someone who has 472 tabs open in both Chrome and her life. I make lists I will absolutely ignore and rewrite later. But for a brief, glorious window of time, everything is organized. Everything has a label. Everything feels manageable.
The truth is, I don’t do a Sunday reset because I’m naturally organized. I do it because I’m not. My brain doesn’t do quiet transitions. It does fire alarms. It does, “We’re out of spoons and also your inbox has become a haunted house.” So I give myself one day to course correct. One day to breathe, regroup, and pretend I can actually manage the week ahead without screaming into the void.
Do I always stick to what I plan? Of course not. By Thursday I’ve usually gone rogue. But that’s not the point. The point is having a place to start from. A place that reminds me I’m trying. That I care. That even in the mess of it, I’m choosing to show up.
