Throughout my 20s and 30s I didn’t have the typical Friday night experience of going out to a bar or restaurant. Most Fridays I worked, usually at a bar or restaurant, which is a unique way both to participate in and be excluded from a typical Friday night. Working Friday nights can be fun: for the most part people are in a good mood and ready to unwind after their work week, and the energy is upbeat and positive. But when you’re working, by definition you’re working, which means you’re usually not having the same sort of fun others are. 

These thoughts corralled inside my mind last night, in that strangely amazing way a mash of thoughts and feelings and memories can almost-instantaneously compound. (Out of where?, I wonder: Where did all of these arise from, so suddenly and richly, and all of it unbidden?, for at no point did I choose to have any of those things flood my mind.) It was 8pm on a Friday night, and I found myself on my knees, digging through the cats’ litter box with a slotted plastic spoon like a miner panning for ore. Outside it was dark. The only sound was the rain tapping softly on the downspouts. 

Life changes, and those old Friday nights are long gone. Where I live there are very few bars or restaurants I enjoy, and I haven’t mixed a cocktail for money since the pandemic.

All of this is. Despite its tiny stature, that is seems to be very challenging for many of us, both as a concept and as a reality. I’m not immune to those difficulties, and occasionally still fight the world surrounding me. But the older I get, and the more Friday nights change and then change again, the more I realize just how is, is is.