Who Killed Friday

"Hey everybody, it's Friday!"

Fridays used to be fun. Fridays were indulgent. Fridays were an oasis in the desert. Fridays were something to look forward to. Fridays were a joyous sigh released by an entire city. Casual Fridays meant comfy jeans, and well-worn flannel shirts. Fridays were without ties. Fridays were without peers. Fridays had their own special kind of energy. Everyone you met felt the same relief that the weekend was upon them. Fridays had drinks on the patio. Fridays had late night movies. Fridays had raucous concerts. Fridays used to be the chocolate fudge sundaes of weekdays. Fridays used to be cool. Then I retired.

Now Fridays are just one day of seven. There is no expectation of a little bit of a “lie-in” on Saturday. Any day can have a “lie-in”. When you can do something special anytime you want, it isn’t special anymore. Friday is just one of those boxes on the calendar, hardly different from any other box anywhere else on the calendar. 

God, how I loved a Friday. Maybe I’d knock off a little early. Maybe if it were warm, I’d grab a soft-serve ice cream from the van across the street from the office. Maybe I’d take a little detour on my bike on the way home. Take the serpentine route, not the as-the-crow-flies kind of route. Hell, watch some crows fly if I wanted. No work tomorrow. No school tomorrow. Saturday was coming, full of promise like a firm pomegranate, pregnant with its juicy treasure.

Of course, the week is still pockmarked by some statutory landmarks, like when shops have shorter hours or aren’t open (Sundays), when galleries or museums are closed (Mondays), or garbage or recycling day (Thursday). Yet, I don’t look forward to those days. They are just days. There’s nothing celebratory or even cheerful about them. They are just there. They are twenty-four hours that pass by. People don’t drink from coffee mugs that say, “Thank God It’s Tuesday”. No one says TGIT. Tuesdays (in some parts) are “Cheap Tuesdays” at the movies. Big whoop. Fridays don’t need a discount because they are Fridays. Fridays make “hump-day Wednesday” look like a lying jerk. Every other day of the week wants to be Friday. For a while Thursdays were the new Fridays. No one ever said Friday was the new Thursday. 

For a six month period I worked a four-day workweek and I took Fridays off. I began calling Thursday, my “Little Friday”. I ended up treating Friday as a Saturday and spent the entire time doing errands or laundry. That’s the problem with a Saturday. It’s your day off but it becomes your day of errands and obligations. Friday only has one obligation: being the bridge between your workweek and your weekend. In the end it didn’t go well as everyone else worked on Friday and would often schedule me into their agendas and I wound up working too many days I wasn’t paid to work.

I think that is the key. Most people work on Friday and have the same expectations of a weekend ahead. It’s the shared experience of working that makes a Friday a comfort. When you don’t share that experience then you are standing on the outside looking in, until you realize how awkward and creepy it is to be standing outside looking in at other people. Oddly, the years I worked freelance, which often led to working strange hours on weekends and holidays, I still enjoyed a Friday free from late meetings or calls. It was the fact that other people stopped working that freed me to get work done. Again, it was a shared experience. The routine of work that so many people share is no longer mine. Maybe I should impose a little bit of routine in my retirement. Not so much to be rigorous or demanding but just enough to give the week some structure. Perhaps that is the key, not structure per se but framing or more specifically, reframing. I didn't lose a Friday, I gained six more Fridays. Everyday is Friday and every afternoon is the beginning of an endless weekend.