The Trouble With Quarantine Fridays
FREAKY FRIDAY
·Updated:
·

Mel Magazine's Miles Klee recently argued that Tuesday is worse than Monday. It's a sound take, and I'd be inclined to agree — except that after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that, in fact, Friday is the worst day of the week — at least in these times of pandemic lockdown. Worse than Tuesdays, definitely worse than Mondays.

Here's the thing: at a certain point, we become inured to Mondays. Mondays carry all the dread of the workweek, but once you're in it, you're in it. The anticipation is over, the suspense is gone, whatever you were loath to confront is at hand, and before you know it, it'll be behind you.

So though we claim to dread Mondays themselves, we actually feel the dread at other times: on Sunday nights, for example, knowing we're going to go to bed and wake up with Monday already in full swing. Or on Sunday morning, even, because maybe you slept in too late, didn't get done what you wanted to do, and by the time you've had breakfast or brunch it's already the afternoon, and the day slides painfully, inexorably into Monday.

But we become inured to Sunday dread too. For some of us, the dread starts to displace itself elsewhere: on Saturday night, sometimes, being that it's the last night of the weekend where you get to wake up on another weekend day.

I'd argue that the dread reaches as far back as Friday. But that's where it stops, because once you back into Thursday, you meet a different stream of energy: that which propels you from Monday toward Friday, toward the beginning of the weekend. That propulsive weekend-ward energy is forceful enough to halt the backward creep of dread at Friday, but not strong enough to push it back toward Monday.

This backsliding dread has never been more potent than it is in quarantine. Yes, time in quarantine is mostly meaningless — except that when we do, at some point, remember what day it is, all the familiar feelings associated with it flood back in. Except in quarantine, we basically get all the downsides of each day of the week with very, very few of the upsides.

On Fridays, we hit the apex of weekend excitement and at the same time begin to feel the first of Monday dread. You've gotten through the whole week, away from Monday — only to approach it again from the other side. Friday means that the weekend is finally here — but it's also that much closer to being over. Friday means work is over (if you work a traditional M-F week) — but what on earth will you do with all your free weekend time since you can't go anywhere?

Even in ordinary circumstances, your Friday night plans might have been great, but were they ever really as great as you wanted them to be? Do they fulfill you like you hoped all week that they would? Did you maybe put a little too much pressure on those plans to redeem a dull and dragging week? Fridays contain multitudes, and all of those multitudes are some form of disappointment.

So Fridays are bad to begin with, and they've never been worse than during quarantine, when you can't even distract yourself with real weekend plans.

But while quarantine Fridays are bad, and sanity is hard to come by during quarantine at all, quarantine is, in fact, good: the more Fridays we spend in safely and responsibly quarantine, the closer we are to getting the hell out. So on the balance, quarantine Fridays are a small price to pay for, you know, keeping people alive.

Have a great weekend, folks, and stay the hell away from each other.

Molly Bradley is an editor at Digg.

Want more stories like this?

Every day we send an email with the top stories from Digg.

Subscribe