FOMO

I get FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) pretty often, and in different ways. I'd like to say I'm a self-aware, grown-up, independent gal who's at peace doing her own thing, but I really don't like missing out, and I'm often paranoid I don't know about some event everyone's going to while I'm the only person sitting in my dorm diving head-first into a YouTube worm-hole. Of course I'm never the only one, no-one ever is.

But more than a "fear of missing out", I think we're afraid of being isolated. Gosh there's so much pressure to be young! I just felt everyone over 25 roll their eyes and everyone over 40 mentally curse me, but hear me out. If you're, say, 52, and you decide to stay in on a Saturday night, just sit and watch a movie, mindlessly add novelty candles to your amazon shopping cart, screenshot blog-recipes, eat a few slices of just plain bread, that's fine! That's considered a nice, normal, relaxing weekend night, as far as I know. Feel free to call me out on that. Truthfully, I have less experience being a 52-year-old woman than you might expect. But if you do that in college, heaven help you! You're young! So help me if I'm nineteen and don't try to absorb all the possible "getting-out" to be had before I graduate! 

Making an argument for "just chilling with my tv and food on the weekend" is far from original. We (us college "kids") are always making sure everyone knows how darn relatable we are because "we just stayed in last Friday", yeah bro we just "watched netflix and ate", so down-to-earth it hurts right? 

If anything we're stressing what a novelty it is that we didn't party 'til the sun rose for once. If someone were to say they "actually ate at a restaurant that wasn't the microwave in my dorm" last Friday, that they in fact "were with friends" for the first time in weeks, it suddenly wouldn't be so cooly relatable, it'd be weird that they didn't ensure everyone that doing so was their norm. 

The result is everyone running around like confused freshmen during orientation wondering if they're having the normal amount of fun. How many beach bonfires have you been to?  Well hello this foldable chair isn't gonna use itself! Did you go see New Guitar Vintage Jeans play? Was that what everyone was doing Thursday? No! They were at Ron's! Who's Ron? Come see (movie)! It's the premier? Ok? No, we're going to the EDM glow-in-the-dark free smoothie date party putt-putt thing on almond place. Yeah me too. Wow, do you ever just stay in and watch netflix? Yes! All the time! I'm so lazy....and relatable, I swear! All the time? NO! hahaha, no, just like, once every few weeks, lolololol! 

Sheesh.