At the start of the semester, I always asked this question out loud to whichever unlucky soul was with me at the time — “What day is it?”
And honestly, the reason I always asked was because I felt so out of control of my life. I religiously started using a physical planner for the first time since high school this semester, and wrote everything down, from homework assignments to plans with friends. My brain was too scattered to remember anything.
Looking back, it was because I hadn’t had such a packed schedule since before the pandemic. I just simply wasn’t used to it. And I remember feeling so stupid for asking that question everyday, because why couldn’t I keep track of something as simple as the day of the week?
I now know it was my way of trying to get a firm grasp on my life so that I wouldn’t disappoint myself or the people I cared about. Even with all the structure in my life this past semester, I felt that things could slip from my grasp more easily than before. Hearing what day of the week it was constantly kept me accountable.
So when I stopped asking this question around a month ago, I was confused. It wasn’t as if my schedule had gotten any less packed. Was I finally figuring it out? Was my body finally in a routine that my mind wasn’t quite aligned with yet?
I realize now that I stopped asking what day it was because I realized that it didn’t matter.
Well, that’s not completely true. It mattered in the way that I had to know what class to attend on what day, but it didn’t matter in terms of how life passes.
Memories can be made on a Tuesday morning or a Saturday night, and hidden blessings are often found when you aren’t actively looking.
So many of my days this semester were making sure I was doing justice to whatever work I was focusing on and trying my best not to get overwhelmed. While I know I was challenged this fall and had an immense personal growth, that feeling of home and content was harder to find as I found myself being swept up in the craziness of a busy schedule.
I learned that the feelings of home and genuine happiness are found not only in various places, but through various ways with various people. Whether it’s a stupid inside joke with a friend or a happy accident that has people in laughing for minutes, these are the moments that really matter, not what day of the week it is.
Within a structured routine — which is important in its own right — there exist pockets of time where the love of life exists, even when it seems impossible to find.
In between the dirty work and responsibilities that come as we get older are moments of pure joy. Moments of humans just being humans fill the time we have while we’re waiting for the larger, seemingly more substantial events. The time we spend waiting for something else to happen are the moments we end up missing the most when they end.
For me, those moments came in the form of laughing over silly things with my fellow editors as we made a second home for ourselves in the newsroom, all working towards a common goal and all bonded in wanting to do it right. It came in the form of meeting up at Starbucks with a friend twice a week before our class and walking into the wrong classroom in the middle of November. It came in the form of being dragged to a movie that I didn’t even end up particularly enjoying but would make for an unexpectedly funny memory — apologies to the “Dune” lovers.
The point is, even with such a rigid schedule, I was able to find hidden blessings, none of which had to do with what day of the week it was. While knowing what day of the week it was helped me ground myself, the people I met and the moments we shared are what ultimately brought meaning to those days.
I am more thankful than ever for the people who made me smile and laugh when it felt like the only thing I was sure about was what day of the week it was. To everyone who always answered when I asked what day it was, thank you for ensuring that I wouldn’t get lost in the day-to-day routine and for lifting me up when nothing seemed to be going right. When everything was a blur, these people, just by being themselves, pulled me out of that rut.
Thank you. This is for you.
