Behind the scenes: Houston, We Have a Blue Monday

Staring from the surface of the moon as the spaceship leaves without me.

It was supposed to be a standard, productive Monday.

We had just come off a lovely weekend—the kind filled with places to go, things to do, and people to see. I had my to-do list ready. The Mayor had his. We had a game plan to launch the week with absolute precision.

Then Monday morning arrived, stepped into the room, and decided to start with a bang.

The trouble actually began on Friday. I had followed procedure—or at least, I followed my own head and instinct—but the technology simply refused to cooperate. It was fine at the time. I shuffled the task around in my head over the weekend, settled into a plan, and pegged it as a non-negotiable, top-priority “must do” for Monday morning.

Back on Friday, I had sent a quick distress signal across the digital ether: “Houston, we have a problem.”

The Mayor, being the organized half of our operation, sent back a neat list of steps to make it an easy fix. Simple, right?

Except when Monday morning rolled around, the technology looked at our neat little plan and gave us a firm: “It’s a no from me.”

We hopped into a quick morning meeting so he could walk me through the process step-by-step.

I followed every instruction, but our digital assistant, Chippy, was feeling particularly uncooperative. Chippy dug its heels in, refused to play nice, and forced the Mayor to add the entire glitch onto his already towering Monday to-do list.

We wrapped up the call, said our goodbyes, and agreed to tackle the monster again later.

Two minutes later, I opened our shared WhatsApp, only to be greeted by a bright, unapologetic message: “LOGGED OUT. You might have switched your phone.”

I stared at the screen. Excuse me? Neither of us had bought a new phone. Why was I suddenly logged out?

Cue Emergency Meeting Number Two. Five minutes after hanging up, we were back on a call, with me pretending I hadn’t just spoken to him three hundred seconds ago, frantically trying to get back online. We fixed it. We breathed out.

Forty minutes later, a fresh message popped up from the Mayor:

“I think you got thrown out again.”

I checked. Logged out. Again.

At that exact moment, I remembered my mom mentioning something about a blood moon late last week. That had to be it. We are officially blaming the moon. Or maybe there’s just something strange in the municipal water supply.

Either way, I felt completely stranded in deep space while the main shuttle powered its engines and flew away without me.

My husband, observing the unraveling from the kitchen counter, offered his usual brand of high-level optimism.

“Look at the bright side,” he said. “It’s Monday. If you fix everything today, the rest of the week is going to be total smooth sailing.”

It was a sweet thought. Grounded, hopeful, reassuring. But sitting in the middle of a tech collapse, “smooth sailing” felt like a mythical land on a map we didn’t have.

Nobody sees the chaos that happens behind the scenes.

The outside world sees smooth posts, neat newsletters, and quiet efficiency. They don’t see the five quick check-ins before 10:00 AM, the endless troubleshooting, or the two hundred frantic WhatsApp messages traded just to get a single system to behave.

And right in the middle of all the digital fires, life keeps happening. Coffee goes cold, shoes need finding, and the clock keeps ticking.

Things go wrong, and then we sit down and fix them. Things run brilliantly until, suddenly, they don’t. That’s just the nature of building anything worth having.

Right now, as the afternoon settles in, I’m just hoping this Blue Monday decides to wrap itself up on a calm, quiet note.

I’m hoping the internal gears stop grinding, Chippy decides to behave, WhatsApp stays logged in, and our digital house returns to order before sunrise tomorrow.

And if it doesn’t?

Well, the moon will move along, the tech will eventually surrender, and we’ll try again.

Through busy schedules, we will follow procedures on Tuesday. We will use the tech, push through notifications and system updates, and stay optimistic. We will have problems, we will troubleshoot everything, and we will check every single detail before the workday even starts.

And hopefully, this September will start fairly smooth with no interruptions—we hope.