It’s Friday night. You made plans three days ago and now you’re blankly staring at your closet, contemplating what the heck you were thinking when you said yes to plans. We’ve all been there – feeling like we are too tired to have a fun night out but not tired enough to cancel plans. It feels like you’re in limbo; not sure whether to commit or simply give up.
Again, we’ve all been there (though I feel like I’m there quite a bit these days) When you make the decision to stick with your plans, it can feel like you’re operating at 50%. You can make conversation and giggle a little bit, but you’re not really having fun. On the other hand, cancelling the plans typically leads to a little bit of FOMO and sometimes a few angry texts in the group chat. It may feel like a lose-lose situation, but doesn’t have to be.
In college, this is an unspoken pressure to always be “on”. To always be happy, energized, and down to do anything. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be that way all the time. But it’s simply unrealistic. People have bad days, or they can’t get enough sleep, or maybe they have a monstrous work load. The list goes on, but the bottom line is there is a long list of real reasons why we can’t always be the eager, down to do anything friend.
This limbo state can be really guilt inducing. I always found myself feeling like I was doing something wrong or letting my friends down because I didn’t feel like going out. And for that reason, I found myself committing to going out regardless of how I was feeling. I would go out to try and force myself to have fun, but I ended up getting into bed those nights feeling overstimulated, angry, and even more drained than I was before.
It took me a while to realize that feeling this was okay, and normal. Despite society’s expectation of us to always be socially available, there are times when life just gets in the way. We’re all entitled to be tired, to be socially drained, or to simply have a bad day. Even more so, we all deal with it in different ways. Some people find a night out to be a great way to end a bad day, and some people may want to crawl into bed at 8pm and sleep it off. Whatever way you lean, let yourself be okay with it. Don’t let societal pressures make you feel guilty or like there is something wrong with you. Instead, let yourself feel and make choices based on what you know will lead you back to that state of balance.