A Time Between Times - A Review of 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday
A topic that often comes up in stories I haven’t finished writing is the concept of spaces between spaces. To this end, I have done substantial research in the form of watching YouTube Horror videos inspired by the concept of liminality. For those who don’t know, liminality or liminal refers to the state of “occupying both sides of a threshold” or “relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.” If you’re familiar with The Back Rooms or a quarter of the posts found on the subreddit r/liminalspace, you sort of get what the premise is: a space that connects Places (capital p) with other Places. Airports. Hotel hallways. These sort of places.
A place between places.
The super literal definition is not much to write about, save for the designers of buildings and interiors who pay these places of mere transitory connection great attention, but there’s also the liminality of a mental state, a less physical definition that describes a mental state of being between two thresholds. Your 20’s, for instance, I would describe as being almost Super Liminal. Your 30’s, not so much. More of a Terminal Liminality that feels rapidly approaching the further into those 30’s you get.
Here, we arrive at a threshold of our liminal discussion, for I submit to you, the reader, the most liminal of times that occurs once per seven days in our lives: 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday.
Just Enough, Yet Not Enough
4:43 p.m. on a Thursday on any given week is a sweet spot. I can only bring my perspective as a working person of the 40 hour variety, an 8-5 grind corporate office type and I’d be curious to see if others in different walks of life would tend to agree or not (there are no comments allowed, but feel free to try to leave one). Odds are, perhaps, when times are busy, that this time is paid little to no notice at all, but I’d wager that the times when this time is noticed, time tends to slow down.
Let’s take 4:43 p.m. as a time by itself. There’s not enough time left in the day to do anything, really. One cannot start to put the finishing touches on a project. One cannot start a new project. There isn’t enough time to get anything meaningful done. Yet, there are 17 long minutes before one can clock out and leave for the day. These are the confines of this particular time - both too long and too short for anything meaningful to happen, hence the liminality of it all. Stuck between productiveness and relaxation, stuck between meaningful progress and busywork, stuck between value and valuelessness, this is 4:43 p.m.
Now let’s add Thursday. Sure, on a Monday, you might be able to quickly jot down a to-do list of sorts to review and tackle on the following Tuesday. 17 minutes can be enough time on a Monday to organize one’s thoughts and tasks because there is so much week left. On a Thursday, however? I mean, who plans to work on a Friday? Working on a Friday is for the unplanned emergencies that are rush orders, tight deadlines, and other such dire circumstances that render looking at a clock in the late afternoon/early evening on a Thursday a fool’s choice. All that can do is highlight how little time is left before the dire circumstances become grave circumstances.
But one does not review the menu offerings of four star restaurants in the middle of warzones- the atmosphere is wrong, and so too must we not dare to review 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday when times are busy. We need the day-to-day 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday. The normally offered 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday. A 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday that cannot be plucked out of a lineup of dozens of 4:43 p.m.’s on a Thursday.
What Can Be Done?
Full disclosure, I started writing this piece at 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday and yet this sentence right here is being written at 8:01 a.m. on the following Friday. Which is to say, not much can be done at 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday.
I suppose back in the day of balancing checkbooks or paying bills by check, one could use 17 minutes of transient time to do checkbook things, whatever they may be. I never actually learned how to “balance” a checkbook, so maybe that takes more time than what the 17 minutes at the end of the day on Thursday allows. I pay all of my bills online and it takes much less than 17 minutes, so that’s out of the question as well.
With the added accepted and all correct addendum that no one works on a Friday, the last dredges of time on a Thursday offer not much in the way of opportunity. One could, say, meditate. Look up what traffic’s like for the drive home. Plan dinner, maybe? If one is so inclined, one may write up a grocery list of things to buy to replenish the stock at home.
These activities are liminal activities. They have little to no bearing or involvement with where one is currently and involve traveling or travel to another location. Writing a grocery list or making an online grocery order for pickup is probably the most liminal activity one can do on a semi-regular basis. A grocery list is stuck between where the person is now and the grocery store - it is on both sides of the threshold. And here we are at 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday, creating one - the most liminal time.
image credit to reddit user shroomley
That or you could be like, caught up in work on a big project and you don’t even notice the time and suddenly it’s 5:37 p.m. and you’re exhausted. There is no in between.
Circular Logic
The more I spiral around how exactly this particular time is the most liminal of all times, the more it becomes apparent to me and most likely you that this entire concept hinges on a few key factors. One, the schedule of an 8-5 office worker. Two, that the person perceiving the time is not a productive member of their company with loads of tasks to fill their day. Three, that any time feels more or less like any other time.
I’ll address these concerns now: All reviews are subjective, silly. Reviews are subjective to bias, taste, personality, and more. So let’s just take all those valid factors we mentioned just now and sweep them under the rug of subjectivity.
The truth is, 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday need not be a literal time. This is the name I have given this time as it is the reference point that I possess to communicate the concept. But 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday for me could be 5:13 a.m. for a night shift worker who knocks off at 5:30 a.m. It doesn’t even have to be on a Thursday.
For someone who travels a lot, their 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday could be those minutes of sitting at the gate of the airport until they can board their flight. And I’d argue that for all people, it’s any time spent waiting in any waiting room before any appointment. All of these times, no matter what the clock and calendar dictate, are in essence 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday.
Rating on a Liminal Scale
So let’s rate this liminal time already and move on to the next state of our being. To recap: 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday provides not enough time to do anything productive, yet just enough time to drag before the transitory period is over. Checkbooks were invented for the purposes of filling these times, but due to modern innovation, this is no longer applicable since little to no people still pay by check. One of the only useful activities that remain to this date is either making a grocery list or ordering groceries online.
It’s limited in scope, freedom, and enjoyment overall. And for a lot of people, it passes by unnoticed or unmarked. I’d wager a bulk of people experiencing 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday would partake in the very modern activity of going on their phone. Social media. News aggregates. Content mills. The junk food of the mind. As a person who is trying to consume less of social media, I am biased against it - there’s your disclaimer - and so I put less value on any time where going on one’s phone is the default activity.
For these many reasons, I cannot in good faith give 4:43 p.m. on a Thursday a high score. I also cannot, in good faith, give it a low score, due to its necessity. Instead, let us part with a very in between score. A score that stands on both sides of a threshold. A liminal score.
5 out of 10. Cannot recommend, but cannot avoid.
