A Month of Mondays to Notice and Return
A Month of Mondays
My partner’s son called January “a month of Mondays” yesterday, and I haven’t been able to shake that thought.
He meant it as an observation, and in part as a complaint. January stretches long and gray, every day feeling like the one where you’re supposed to start fresh but mostly just feel tired. The resolution energy that peaked on New Year’s Eve has already faded. The gyms are crowded. The planners are open but some pages already skipped. Everyone is performing enthusiasm for their fresh start while quietly wondering when it will feel real.
But he accidentally named something true. January does feel like one long Monday because it is the day when we notice the gap between intention and reality. Monday is when you see clearly what drifted over the weekend. What you said you would do and what you actually did. What needs attention and what you’ve been avoiding.
This is actually the better moment. After the performance of fresh starts, before the resignation of “same old, same old.” After the champagne optimism, before the February cynicism. The space where practice lives.
The space where we can notice and return.
The Return, Not The Arrival
The instruction is simple: when you notice you’ve drifted, return. You don’t beat yourself up. You don’t start over from scratch. You just come back.
There is a moment in meditation when you realize you have been thinking instead of breathing. You got lost somewhere, followed a train of thought, forgot you were sitting. The practice is not to never get lost. The practice is to notice and return. You do not apologize to yourself. You just come back.
Evaluation has a version of this. You notice when you have slipped into extraction, when you are performing expertise instead of actually listening, when the reports are going through the motions. And you return.
The problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they assume you can arrive somewhere permanent. “This year I will be organized.” “This year I will prioritize self-care.” “This year I will only take ethical contracts.” As if transformation happens once and stays fixed.
Practice works differently. You drift. You notice. You return. You drift again. The noticing gets faster. The returning gets easier. But you never arrive at a place where you have it figured out.
New Year is not magic. But it is a culturally sanctioned moment to notice. A month of Mondays gives us plenty of chances. We might as well use them.
What I’m Noticing
I have been thinking about what drifted in my own practice over the past year.
Times I wrote vague language to keep everyone comfortable. “Some evidence suggests.” “Challenges remain.” “Further study is needed.” The phrases that let funders and program staff both claim victory while the actual findings disappeared into fog.
Evaluations where I knew the answer the funder wanted. I did not fabricate data or lie about what I found. But I knew which doors to open and which to leave closed. I knew how to frame results so they landed the right way.
The gap between my Buddhist Evaluation ideals and my Tuesday afternoon reality. I write about presence and non-attachment and beginner’s mind. Then I rush through an interview because I am already late for the next meeting. I notice I am confirming what I expected to find instead of actually seeing what is there. I hand in reports and immediately forget about them because three more deadlines are pressing.
I am not confessing sins here. I am naming what happens when you try to do careful work inside systems that do not value careful work. When you try to practice presence while operating on extraction timelines. When you try to center community knowledge while contracts are written to serve funder accountability.
The noticing is not comfortable. But it is the practice.
What The Field Might Notice
If we are being honest, here is what the evaluation community might see when we check.
We say “learning” but optimize for performance. The RFPs ask for learning questions but the real question is always “did the program work?” We design participatory processes but structure them to confirm what stakeholders already believe. We talk about emergence and adaptation but deliver reports that reward programs for hitting predetermined targets.
We claim participatory but extract on compressed timelines. We want community voice but we have six weeks and fifteen interviews and a framework that was decided before we talked to anyone. We say “co-creation” but we mean “we will incorporate your feedback into our analysis.” The knowing belongs to them. We take it and hand it upward.
We talk about equity but take contracts that reinforce extraction. We write about centering marginalized voices while working for funders who will never share the report with the communities being evaluated. We critique power dynamics while depending on those same dynamics for our next contract. We know which clients to decline but we also know we need to eat.
We advocate for rest but model burnout. We write about sustainable practice while checking email at midnight. We talk about evaluator well-being while bidding on timelines we know are impossible. We recognize that tired evaluators produce thin work, and then we stay tired.
No finger-pointing here. This is the water we swim in. But if we are using January to notice, we might as well notice what is true.
The Practice (Not The Plan)
The difference between resolution culture and practice is the difference between arrival and attention.
Resolutions assume you can decide to be different and then be different. “I will never do X again.” “I will always do Y.” Perfection or failure. Achievement or shame. You make it to the gym every day in January or you are back where you started.
Practice assumes you will drift. The question is not whether you will slip into old patterns but how quickly you notice when you do. Practice is not about never getting lost. It is about getting faster at finding your way back.
This is what it means practically:
Not “I will only take ethical contracts” but “I will notice when a contract compromises integrity.” You might still take it. You might need to. But you will know what you are doing instead of pretending it is something else.
Not “I will always center communities” but “I will notice when I have positioned myself as expert.” You will catch yourself explaining instead of listening. You will see when you are performing knowledge instead of creating conditions for collective understanding. And you will return.
Not “I will never burn out” but “I will notice when I am pushing past sustainable.” You will feel the exhaustion before it becomes collapse. You will see the signs, the thin sleep and the short temper and the interviews you cannot quite remember. And you will rest, or at least you will know that not resting is a choice.
The practice is the noticing and returning. Not the perfect performance.
What I’m Carrying, What I’m Releasing
I have been asking myself what comes with me into 2026 and what stays behind.
Carrying forward:
The commitment to name extraction when I see it. Not just in other people’s work but in my own. To say clearly when evaluation is serving accountability instead of learning, when findings are flowing upward instead of back to communities, when the jewel is being taken instead of pointed at.
The practice of asking “whose knowing is this?” before writing reports. To check whether I am synthesizing collective understanding or claiming expertise that is not mine. To notice when I am translating community knowledge into funder language and whether that translation is service or theft.
The discipline of rest as data, not luxury. My exhaustion is information about whether the system is viable. My ability to be present depends on whether I am rested enough to notice. This is not self-care as bubble bath. This is recognizing that burned-out evaluators produce worse work.
Releasing:
The pressure to have it figured out. I do not need to arrive at a place where I never compromise, never drift, never take the contract I should decline. I need to notice faster when I do.
The performance of having transcended the problems I critique. I write about extraction and presence and beginner’s mind, and I still do evaluations where I am rushing and performing and extracting. The gap between what I teach and what I practice is not hypocrisy. It is being human. The practice is narrowing the gap, not pretending it does not exist.
The idea that one more framework will fix it. I do not need another model or another set of principles. I need to practice the ones I already have. Notice and return. Notice and return.
Tomorrow’s Evaluation
Not “new year new you.” Just: tomorrow you will sit down to work.
There will be an interview, or a dataset, or a report to write. The same work you did last year. The same pressures, the same timelines, the same tension between what you want evaluation to be and what the contract actually allows.
Before you begin, pause. Ask: Why am I doing this? What am I attached to finding? Am I rested enough to be present?
You will not always have good answers. Sometimes the answer to “why am I doing this?” is “because I need the money.” Sometimes the answer to “what am I attached to?” is “proving I was right.” Sometimes the answer to “am I rested enough?” is “no, but the deadline is tomorrow.”
That is fine. The practice is asking.
You will drift. You will slip back into extraction, into performance, into the habits you said you would notice. You will write vague language to keep everyone comfortable. You will rush through interviews. You will hand the community’s knowing upward without asking who it belonged to.
And then you will notice. Maybe not right away. Maybe not until you are reviewing the transcript and realize you were not actually listening. Maybe not until you are writing the report and feel the gap between what you found and what you are saying.
But you will notice. And you will return.
A month of Mondays means a month of chances to begin again.
Anthralytic explores evaluation, strategy, and the practice of seeing clearly. Subscribe for writing on Buddhist evaluation, post-capitalist metrics, and striving to build systems that don't extract.
