Farewell Letter from Your Coworker

Why are these so dramatic?? 

This blog coming up is another very dramatic farewell idk what is up with me this week

Farewell Letter to Summer Fridays

Oh, Summer Fridays. It seems like every year we do this same song and dance. A manic whirlwind of carefree fun from Memorial Day to Labor Day, followed by 9 months of forced sabbatical, chasing the ghost that is our love while the gaping hole that is your absence grows larger with each passing day.  

I can’t quit you, but I can’t make you stay. And maybe that’s for the best.

How to describe the way you make me feel? Can I even put into the words the joy of knowing nothing will be expected from me at work today? The delight in seeing a Friday afternoon tee time on my calendar? The prickling sense of excitement and anticipation for a weekend of debauchery that exists simply because you do? I wish you knew how you made my heart flutter every Friday, knowing that I have no responsibility ahead of me besides making the most of my summer and maybe getting a tux for a wedding next weekend that I kind of want to go to.

What I love most about you is how generous and open you are with your love, Summer Fridays. You bring so many people together.  Without you, family vacations that end up being 36 hours longer than they needed to be wouldn’t exist. How would we remember what annoys us about our loved ones if you were never born? Who else but you can bring an entire group of friends to an Air BnB for a long weekend, where they’ll pretend to work for 2 hours before heading to the pool or beach or hiking if they’re a little lame? How else would we hear our friends use their corporate voice on calls and make fun of them for it afterwards?

Sure, I try to make it work the other 9 months of the year. I refuse to work after 1 pm on a Friday, no matter the season. I always have a drink or a nap at 3 pm in your honor. But, it doesn’t feel the same. As much as I try to avoid afternoon meetings or emails, I can’t avoid the thought that people in my company are actually working now and expecting things of me. I wish I had your strength Summer Fridays, but that’s not how I was built. Maybe we’re just too different to last.

Would you be mad if I told you a small part of me is happy to see you go? That I’ll always cherish our special brand of frenzied, desperate love but each year when September arrives so too does my resentment for you?

I hope you don’t take this personally, but I’m looking forward to not living out of a suitcase every weekend. Or showing up to every social event covered in back sweat. Or having no time to work out but being shirtless and sunburnt nonstop. Or taking the subway with golf clubs and feeling like an asshole when someone asks me for money and I have to say “I don’t have any cash” which is true but I still feel weird holding a bag worth several thousand dollars designed for the most expensive hobby available to men in their 20s and acting like I don’t’ have money?

Oh money. That dirty word that always comes between us. I love you Summer Fridays, but I don’t think I can afford you. You deserve the world, but if I’m being completely honest, I wouldn’t mind going one weekend without spending every dime to my name on plane tickets or happy hour or new sunglasses since I lose mine every weekend.

And please, don’t hate me for saying this, but you want to know the thing I won’t miss about you? The pressure to do something with a nice day. I work kind of hard for most of the week. And I know this goes against everything you stand for, but sometimes I just want to sit inside and binge Better Call Saul because I want to understand the memes about it. And when it’s absolutely beautiful out and I see Instagram stories of people playing with a dog in a park or drinking on a rooftop, I feel like a bad person. I feel like a bad person all the time – I don’t think I can handle much more.

We still have one last weekend together, Summer Fridays. If you’ll still have me, I say we make it count. Fill it with enough memories to last us until next year. When it’s time to do it all again

Baby Hippo of the Week

Many thanks to Katie DiFazio for sharing this lovely photo of baby Fritz from the Cincinatti Zoo who is clocking in at a spry 144 pounds and puts on 3 pounds every day. That's a big baby!! 

Longforms of the Week

• Can the American Mall survive?

• The humiliating history of the TSA.