Friday Fears

Lots of people get the Sunday Scaries–that sinking feeling when the weekend starts slipping away and Monday looms large with its never ending to-do lists and tight schedules. I don’t get Sunday Scaries though–I get Friday Fears. It hits around 5pm. While everyone around me seems to collectively exhale, my body tightens. 

During the school year, my weekends are spent at my job, working on assignments, tackling my never-ending laundry pile, and calculating whether I can make it through the next week without getting groceries. However, during the summer, my weekends aren’t filled with work and daunting deadlines. I have two full days to do as I please. The thing I romanticized during the school year is finally here and yet, when my weekend rolls around and my world finally slows down, I freeze. 

It’s like my brain has been sprinting for so long that it doesn’t remember how to walk. I sit in the silence of an unstructured day and become flooded with panic. My head races with thoughts of “I should be doing something. I’m wasting my weekend.” And so begins the spiral. I wake up on Saturday morning, roll over, check my phone, and immediately feel the weight of all the things I could be doing. Yet,instead of trying to do any of those things, I do… nothing. Or at least the kind of “nothing” that doesn’t feel replenishing. I do the kind of nothing that feels like I’m hiding from time itself–like I’m hiding from myself. I doom scroll. I pace. I disappear into my own head where one thought leads to another and another until I emerge feeling as though I’ve run a marathon, despite having not moved for hours. I’m left mentally drained. 

The shame and guilt hit quickly: Why can’t I enjoy this? I wanted downtime and I should be grateful. I swore if I could just have one weekend off, I’d do all the things I’d been putting off. But now the time has come and the freedom is paralyzing. There are hobbies I told myself I’d get back into, stacks of books that cover my desk patiently waiting for me to remember their existence, friends I should text, a walk I could take, a workout I could do, a house that needs cleaning. I feel like I should be working on myself and becoming a well-rounded person who meditates and learns to cook new foods for fun. The shame and guilt of a weekend wasted only leaves me more paralyzed and emotionally exhausted. 

I was left questioning if this is normal or if I’d officially forgotten how to rest. Eventually, I felt broken. Why couldn’t I relax? Why does an empty schedule feel like a personal attack? 

My discomfort felt like a failure. However, it’s not a flaw in my personality. It’s the residue of years of being trained in the grind mentality and hustle culture. I’ve been conditioned to believe that productivity equals purpose and that this is a measurement of my worth. When I’m not busy, my inner voice freaks out; it tells me I’m lazy, that I’m wasting my potential, or that I’m falling behind. My inner voice has learned to echo the social pressures of the outer world, blurring the line between external expectations and my own self-judgement. As a result, my body and brain don’t know how to sit in stillness without scrambling to justify it. Rest feels daunting, and downtime feels like a trap.

This summer, I’m discovering that slowing down isn’t something you just do—it’s something you learn. I’m learning how to sit with myself without the noise. I’m beginning to feel what it’s like to rest, not just perform rest. I’m noticing moments of gratitude for downtime without needing to prove I deserve it or feeling pressure to turn it into a project. 

The Friday Fears still sneak up and sometimes I get a buzz of panic in my chest that settles into a clenched jaw when a weekend with a clear schedule arrives. But now, I’m trying to approach it differently. No more scheduling every hour of my weekend to try and maintain a sense of control. Instead of scrambling to fill the time, I’m trying to feel it. Even if it’s awkward. Even if it’s painfully quiet. 

I used to think unstructured time was empty, but it’s spacious. And sometimes, in that space, something gentle and honest shows up: a small desire to write, to venture to the farmer’s market alone, or to simply sit in the sun without documenting it.

This isn't a failure after all. It’s part of unlearning what I’ve been taught. Rest isn’t supposed to feel productive and perhaps it’s going to feel awkward before it starts to feel comforting. 

Maybe in this slowness, in this scary pause, there’s something sacred—something I’ve been moving too fast to feel. 

Maybe this is growth.