I found myself the other day reading a friends notebook. It is from thirty years ago when she was the age I am now and I was reading it on a Friday night. I was shattered from the week and had consumed enough wine to sink a large ship, but decided against the pub. There I was thirty years on and thinking “I should be out. I should be doing what she was doing in 1986. I shouldn’t be sitting in bed about to get stuck into another chapter of my book. What is wrong with me?”
Why?
I’m the worst for comparing myself to others and thinking that I should be doing this or shouldn’t be doing that, but the above scenario inspired this blog post because my thought process was ridiculous! Nobody is telling me that I should be out on a Friday night – well, they do if I stay in and tell me I should stay in if I go out – but for some reason I felt a wave of comparison wash over me.
Social media is a huge problem on this front because I could be having a lazy weekend after a hectic week at work and a long string of busy weekends when I see on my friends’ insta-stories that they’re out at some festival or a party on a boat. At that point the FOMO kicks in, bad.
Yet I never get sad when someone is engaged or upset when I hear another friend has landed themselves a cracking new job in London, so I’m certainly not saying that social media is totally to blame. No, in these circumstances I’m very happy for them being a positive take on the new virtual platform that takes up so much of our lives. It does remind me though of what I’m not doing and for a minute – occasionally longer – makes me question the route I am choosing to take so again I start to compare.
The mind is a crazy thing!
I think the message I am taking away from my thoughts is to care less (easier said than done). To care so much about others and be happy for them in everything that they do but to care less in comparison to myself.
Yes, I am 24. I love to party, I often get too drunk and fall over, I love wine, I adore day drinking in the sun and sometimes I kiss multiple guys at once or flirt with them purely to get a drink.
Madness!
However, I also love sleep, get tired, enjoy time to myself, nights in, quiet days, radio 4, reading, long drives, country music.
Basically I am human and don’t necessarily follow the crowd of my peers. Whether it is right for my age or wrong, it is what I enjoy so I am going to keep on doing it.
Most people don’t judge and mostly it is all inside my head. It’s either that or they judge to a hilarious level and one week say I should be doing one thing then the next I should be doing the total opposite.
At the end of the day, and in the words of an (very) old singer who’s song I like – it’s MY LIFE – go ahead with your own life and leave me alone!