Do you breathe a sigh of relief on Thursdays because you have only got one more day to go until your work week ends then get a knot in your stomach on Sundays? But then if you don’t, you may be one of the lucky ones, although the truth is that, it has nothing to do with luck.
To some, work seems to be almost affiliated with a form of self-punishment, rather than something that feels worth doing because it greatly engages talent and motivation. When we live in the “Thank God it’s Friday” (TGIF) paradigm, we are punishing ourselves without necessarily realising it, agreeing to suffer through our work days until we can finally enjoy two days off.
Recently, my friend told me that she does not understand what the fuss about TGIF is all about.
To her, she likes Mondays more than Sundays.
It is an obvious barefaced betrayal of the social code, a violation against the social media-enforced conduct manual wherein weeks, particularly the beginnings of them, are aspersed and weekends are worshipped.
I have played into this dichotomy myself, a willing supplicant, repeating insipid aphorisms like, ‘I cannot believe it is Monday’ or ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ to an audience nodding with agreement, propagating our generation’s most ubiquitous variety of call and response.
At a certain point, it’s impossible for me not to take note of a conflicting pattern: one in which my stress levels would start to peak and upsurge over the course of most weekends and only return to their neutral, normal hum when I wake up on Monday mornings.
As a generally anxious extroverted introvert with work and after-work weekday schedule, I can venture a guess as to why this cycle kept repeating itself. While the schedule of my weeks is embedded in a pretty regular structure (wake up, go to work, have dinner with close friends or cook for myself, read, go to bed), my weekends are relatively routine-less, characterised by the freedom that might be liberating if it was not frequently puckered by social obligations, errands I couldn’t get done during the week, unsteady sleep schedules, and downtime, which I feel guilty for not maximising and enjoying.
Weekend hype is shaped in many ways mostly by social media: the existence of internet languages like FOMO, TGIF, and sayings like ‘Saturdays are for barbecues’ or ‘living for the weekend’ is evidence that our cultural obsession with weekends is shaping the way we talk and think about our lives.
And people’s documentation of weekends on Instagram Stories and Snapchat only further amplifies their cultural currency.
When people are out doing fun stuff, trying every bar, club, and restaurant, it might be emotionally exhausting to not have a quiet night every once in a while.
There’s so much pressure to energise yourself in every regard. Unlimited sleep and homemade savoury meals can be enjoyed on weekends.
But for parents, childcare turns weekends into work days, too. This can also apply to people who work more than one job or self-employed people who have less of a traditional Monday-to-Friday work schedule; having the weekend as the only free time to recharge and reconnect with your inner child.
