Thank God Friday Means Nothing

I have (consensual) access to someone else’s Instagram. I won’t bother explaining why.

The feed of their followers is rife with pictures of random things. Makeup, high heels, trees, flowers, booze, skylines, beer flights, drag queens, typewriters, ukuleles, food people didn’t cook, food people did cook, drunk people, sober people, babies, fashion, more drag queens, more babies, fashion on people’s babies, babies that will be future drag queens, etc.

Then, every Wednesday I’m assaulted with images about “hump day.” Every Friday I’m assaulted with images about TGIF.

I pride myself on being a fairly intelligent person, but for several years I believed that Hump Day was a day reserved for people getting it on. I didn’t understand that people hated their lives so much that they needed a mid-week goal post to get to in order to keep on truckin’ until Friday. It was astonishing to me.

That being said, I’m a pretty big proponent of defeatism, and bitching and whining. I love complaining.

However, if crawling your way through Wednesday is that arduous, and Friday is that much of a beacon of light for this many people… I think I’m going to start a new religion and start making a shit ton of cash.

I have never been the ideal employee. I’m a good worker, but companies don’t care for me as an all-around person to have on staff. I never quite found my niche as far as the job market was concerned. But, I have a lot of skills and nowadays my income is very diverse.

At one point, my primary career seemed to be on track, only to go into a tailspin again when I attempted to make certain advancement efforts. Silly me.

A friend of mine insists that I have an “entrepreneurial spirit,” which I think is motivational speak for: you have a lot of ideas and hate having a shitty boss.

Even with my history, I can’t remember a time where I’ve uttered the phrase “Thank god it’s Friday.” I don’t think I’ve ever lived my life for 5pm on that day, sighing with relief as I get in my car to leave my workplace at the end of the week. My brain and body don’t allow me to check out in that capacity.

It all just begins again in roughly 64 hours.

What do those 64 weekend hours away from your job get you? A new job? A new life?

If you dislike things so much, and find them so draining, what does your weekend give back to you?

Whenever I’m in a job so hateful and soul-crushing, I find time off a relief, but also scary. It’s an immediate countdown to when I have to return. It’s a time clock tracking how much I can get done to change my circumstances before I’m corralled back into a workplace that won’t allow me to hunt for other jobs while I’m there.

Friday wasn’t freedom in those circumstances. Friday was fear.

And if I ever got to a place where Friday did feel like I was being let out of jail, I knew I was doing something wrong. I didn’t want to feel that way about my life five out of seven days per week.

The jobs I remember fondly are the ones where it was Wednesday and a co-worker would say, “Hump day!” and I couldn’t identify with their enthusiasm. People would stream in on Friday morning and say, “Yay Friday!” and I would realize that I thought it was Thursday because I hadn’t been paying attention to the impending weekend. The end of the day on Tuesday would come and I thought it was Wednesday because I had gotten so much work done, and was way ahead of my deadlines.

One of my random duties, though I don’t make any direct money from it, is posting things on this Instagram page. Even if they get more traffic to the page, I will not post #humpday or #tgif posts.

It may seem petty or strange, but I don’t enjoy indulging people’s dislike of their week in this way. If I make a graphic or a meme that capitalized on #humpday, then post it on a page to encourage traffic to a company’s Instagram, I am praying on your self-loathing. You hate 5/7 of your week, and I want you to show it by clicking a little red heart on my picture.

Instead, I’ll post things about things we enjoy, and I’ll just hope you enjoy them too.

Ainslie Caswell is a fledgling writer and playwright, experimenting with her writing on Medium and Twitter. She is finishing a book about the year of her life spent as an exotic dancer. Visit her at www.ainsliecaswell.com.