Weekend

Why Friday Feels Like a Relief That Turns Into Restlessness

Why do I look forward to Friday so much, and when it finally comes, I feel disappointed? 

I feel like I could have done more this week; I don’t necessarily mean work. 

I work all week, it stresses me out, it agitates me, but I still like what I do. I’ve put a lot of effort into being able to do something I enjoy, but I don’t feel tied to it in a strict sense. In my imagination, I could be the best actor, the best craftsman, the best influencer. 

But do I still want to keep doing this? 

Do I want to continue doing what I’m doing now?
If I try something else, what if it doesn’t satisfy me? 

What if the money won’t be enough? 

Is what I’m doing now enough? 

How can I be better? 

Does it even make sense to try to be better at what I do?

Can I work more?
Can I do more around the house? Can I… can I… 

The same feelings keep repeating in a loop and intensify as the workweek ends. Along with these thoughts, another question comes to my mind. 

How did I end up here? I’ve thought about this question a lot: what can I do to feel satisfied? To stop trying to prove that I can do even more, even though nobody is asking me to, and sometimes I take it to extremes?

To this question, I think I have a partial answer: a hypothesis and a certainty. 

The hypothesis is that I have ADHD. I was never officially diagnosed. Back in childhood, ADHD was called “bad behavior” and was treated with beating or diazepam.

Now, speaking about the certainty, I had a project at work that I really cared about, and my involvement was 100%. There was a lot of work, and we also had overtime. Nothing mandatory, properly paid, and with great colleagues. 

Working that much for a long period of time—by that I mean months—wasn’t exactly the best thing I did. I developed a habit of always having something to do, of having an almost permanent schedule.

When that project ended, I started having more free time. Luckily, during that period I also had more work around the house, so I didn’t feel completely useless in the universe. But after finishing the work at home too—painting, flooring, electrics—I started to feel a strange mix of burnout.

It feels like whatever I do is not enough, and I’m wasting my free time. Which in reality should be for relaxing, reading a book, and most importantly, spending time with family.

But instead, I prefer spending my time trying to make a plan about how to spend my time, and thinking about what I could have done better.

I gradually realized that I function only with a well-defined schedule. But that schedule also has to cover my entire day. The thought of doing nothing genuinely unsettles me. Even though it’s normal to rest, to relax. Not just work, work, work. 
A few months have passed and I’m still trying to adjust to weekends. Apparently, a structured program works for me.

However, I still get weekends like this. The schedule was short, and for about 3 hours I try to motivate myself to just watch a match calmly, but I get restless. I don’t bother anyone—I keep to myself—but I keep trying to find something to do that, in my mind, would be more useful than watching a match and then a movie with my family.

It’s not a good idea to fall into a vicious cycle where work becomes more important than anything else.

In the end, we work so we can live; we don’t live to work. And we also shouldn’t go to the other extreme of not caring at all. There has to be balance in everything—but here, it matters quite a lot.

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