When Friday Relief Becomes a Warning Sign

The quiet shift that made me stop looking forward to Monday

I used to look forward to Monday mornings.

I’d sit at my desk Sunday night, laptop open, house quiet, already thinking about the week ahead. New problems to solve. Conversations I wanted to have. A sense that things were about to start moving.

Then something changed.

I started celebrating Fridays.

Not in a casual TGIF way. I was counting down to them. Watching the clock. Waiting for the week to end.

Relief replacing interest.

Escape replacing engagement.

That shift bothered me more than any burnout or stress ever did.

Because I’d never been a Friday person. When I was younger, the week was the main event. Fridays were fine, but they weren’t something I marked time toward.

Now I was measuring my weeks in time-until-relief.

Monday mornings stopped pulling me forward. They started pressing down on me. I wasn’t curious about what the week might bring. I was bracing for it.

Nothing was wrong on paper. I still knew my job. People still depended on me. I was still good at what I did.

But I’d stopped wanting to do it.

So I adjusted instead of listening.

I leaned into being competent. Reliable. Steady. I told myself this was what maturity looked like. That wanting less from work was part of growing up.

The scary part wasn’t the feeling.

It was how easy it was to normalize it. To build a life that worked while quietly counting down time.

That’s when I realized I was in the wrong room. Not because the door was wrong when I walked through it. But because staying had started to cost me more than leaving felt scary.

Reinvention didn’t start with confidence for me. It started with admitting that the shift was real, and that pretending it was normal was draining something I couldn’t replace.

Which part of your week are you trying to get through instead of actually living?

CTRL: R

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