My second post comes 4 months after my first. Did I expect this to happen, no. Is it entirely my own fault, yes? I haven’t prioritised this as much as I was hoping too and, in the end, it has meant a 4-month gap between two posts. I’m not going to make excuses and pretend I have been busy enough not to write anything because I haven’t.
Sometimes life gets in the way and we forget to do things that we initially set out to do. I am ok with that and am going to promise myself to TRY and do better.
In a way it’s perfect because it leads well on to what I want to write about today.
Pressure.
We all feel it in some form, but this weekend it really hit me hard and I didn’t even know it was pressure to begin with. This weekend (a bank holiday weekend) I knew I didn’t want to do too much. I wanted to save money and chill to make sure I felt refreshed for a new week at work, at the gym and in general. I went out with some friends on Friday night, which was really really lovely, and the rest of the weekend was spent cleaning the house, going to the gym and doing life admin (I HATE LIFE ADMIN).
Quite quickly I began to get serious cabin fever, I have never been one of these people who is happy to spend the whole weekend alone in the house doing nothing. To be honest it stresses me out and makes me start to question things. The cabin fever then morphed into a small amount of anxiety about not having enough friends, the friends I do have not liking me enough to do something with me at the weekend, not going out to all these cool places in London, jealousy of my housemates who were going out and about, and not having a boyfriend to rely on when I need someone to harass into doing something with me. BLA BLA BLA, even writing this I am thinking ‘get over it’. But, it’s how I felt at the time and I could have let it slightly spiral and get me down.
I called my best friend on Sunday when I was heading to the gym and I said to her something along the lines of, my friends are pissing me off. She asked what they had done and I couldn’t answer that. They hadn’t done anything; I was just feeling down and decided the logical option was to blame someone else. This morning I then text another friend saying I missed the gang and feel like we don’t hang out anymore. His response, ‘Na, I mean we don’t hang out much as a full group sadly. Think its just because everyone is busy in their own right.’ This was comforting, but also made me think I don’t have enough friends. Why is everyone else busy and I’m not. Do I rely too much on that one group of friends in London? Maybe its time to branch out.
I’m not entirely sure where this all came from and its not really something I have experienced in this form before, but it did make me think about why I felt this way and I have decided its pressure. Pressure to always seem busy, pressure to have loads of friends, pressure to have a partner, pressure to look like you live the best life in London.
I’m not sure it’s all possible.
I have always been bad for comparing myself to other people, I think this comes from being competitive but also wanting to be the centre of attention all the time. Social media obviously pays a huge part in this. I thought I never looked at social media in that way, however, I think I do get jealous of everyone being out and being on holiday all the time with loads of different people and generally looking like that are having the time of their life. I know social media is an unrealistic representation of ourselves, but it’s hard to separate real life from what you see on Instagram.
I’m not sure I have become reformed and would now be able to take myself out for dinner, or spend the whole weekend doing nothing. But what it has taught me is that, I have great friends, I have a fabulous family, I have wonderful housemates and I need to appreciate that more often and STOP thinking that I need more of everything. I also need to learn to spend time by myself. Whether that means going for a walk to grab a coffee or going to a museum or art gallery by myself, it’s something I need to do so that the next time my friends are all busy (and rightly so) I don’t get myself into this tizz. I just treat it like any other weekend and spend some time with myself!
P.S. any tips on this would be more than welcome 😊
The year for me! 