You Are Not Alone

— And Monday Morning Is Not a Moral Obligation

Chicago, Illinois
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Sunday Night and the Weight of Monday Morning

If you’re sitting there on a Sunday night thinking about Monday morning, you’re not imagining things.

That tight feeling in your chest.
That sense that the work waiting for you tomorrow is pointless.
That quiet anger you don’t quite have words for yet.

You are not alone.

Most people don’t say it out loud, but millions feel the same way. They wake up, go to jobs that don’t use their minds, don’t respect their time, and don’t serve their lives. The work doesn’t build anything meaningful for them. It doesn’t make the world better. It just fills hours until the paycheck clears.

A Broken Job Inside a Broken System

And here’s the part you’re allowed to admit, even if no one at work ever says it:

The system that created those jobs is just as broken as the jobs themselves.

Most workplaces are not designed to help you grow, thrive, or become who you actually are. They are designed to extract labor, keep costs down, and keep people too tired to question the arrangement. “Career fulfillment” is the marketing language. Survival is the reality. Over the past several years, research has consistently shown that only a small minority of workers feel meaningfully engaged in their jobs, while most report disengagement, emotional detachment, or burnout.

That doesn’t make you lazy.
That doesn’t make you ungrateful.
That makes you observant.

What Work Actually Is

Your job is not your identity.
Your employer is not your family.
And you do not owe loyalty to a system that treats you as replaceable.

The truth is simpler than we’re taught to believe. For most people, employment is a transaction. It pays the rent. It keeps the lights on. It puts food on the table. That’s it. Nothing more. Anything beyond that is a story we’re told to keep us compliant.

So when you feel dissatisfied, drained, or resentful, don’t turn that inward. Don’t blame yourself. What you’re feeling is not personal failure. It’s a signal.

Why That Signal Matters Now

The same system that hollowed out work has also hollowed out democracy. The same forces that tell people to be grateful for meaningless labor are the ones asking them to accept corruption, cruelty, and authoritarian politics as inevitable. Economic insecurity and job dissatisfaction weaken democratic participation and make people more vulnerable to manipulation and coercion.

You don’t have to accept that.

Dissatisfaction as Leverage

History does not change because people are comfortable. It changes when enough people stop internalizing blame and start acting together — peacefully, deliberately, and without illusion. Nonviolent direct action has repeatedly shown itself to be one of the most effective ways ordinary people can challenge systems that no longer respond to democratic pressure.

You are not weak for feeling worn down.
You are not broken for questioning the point of it all.

What you are feeling is clarity.

And clarity, shared with others, is far more powerful than obedience ever was.

If Monday morning feels heavy, remember this: you are not alone — and you are not powerless.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

This essay will be archived as part of the ongoing WPS News Monthly Brief Series available through Amazon.

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References (APA)

Chenoweth, E., & Stephan, M. J. (2011). Why civil resistance works: The strategic logic of nonviolent conflict. Columbia University Press.

Fraser, N. (2019). The old is dying and the new cannot be born: From progressive neoliberalism to Trump and beyond. Verso.

Gallup. (2022). State of the global workplace: 2022 report. Gallup Press.

Gallup. (2023). State of the global workplace: 2023 report. Gallup Press.

Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic.