Hi friends!
… as a quick aside (from what?), I almost mistyped that as ‘hi friend’ (singular) which would have been a rather embarrassing situation. Anyway, welcome! Today’s post is going to talk about why I seem unable to “do” clubbing. It’s become quite the revelation in my life recently, although really I have always known it. It’s just about facing up to who I am, and we all gotta do what we gotta do. You feel me?
I’m just going to nip something in the bud first off: as you may know, I am 27, and so some people may think “why would you be going out anyway? Shouldn’t you be settling down and popping out a baby or growing your career or getting older or something?”. And those people are usually the same people who think that full time jobs are the way of the future and also that if we restrict all of our joy and spending in our current life, we actually will be able to take our money with us when we die. So what I’m saying is, I don’t listen to these people. Wow, that got real serious, real quick! But really, fun is fun whether you’re “young” or “old”. I mean, if you still like jumping in puddles when you’re 80, is it even possible to ever really get old?
And so, being a bit of a slow burner and someone who likes to catch onto things approximately 5 years after everyone else (see: Harry Potter, Breaking Bad, moving out of my parent’s house), living in Korea has enabled me to do what I want, when I want, and particularly how I want. This usually involves eating delicious food, talking to kind people and then holing myself away like the hermit crab I am (sometimes/most of the time).
Now, I’m not saying that I’ve never been clubbing before, or that I’ve never enjoyed it before. I have! I really have! But it’s never really been my thing. I’m a bit of an awkward flower and on a recent weekend outing I was awarded the title of “The Coldest Australian I’ve Ever Met” by some American people I don’t really know at all, so you know, do with that what you will. Anyone who actually knows me will understand how untrue this is (I love children and kittens and “Aussie battlers”), but I do know that if I am uncomfortable in a situation (which I often am) I will just clam up and stand there and probably look really cold. Some people aren’t like this, and some people are. Them’s the breaks, kids.
I actually don’t mind being like this, and part of the reason is because I don’t really like BS. I can’t stand smalltalk (well I can, but not for long), and if someone asks me my name three times within a two-minute window, I’m going to get a bit disgruntled. Not angry, but I will refuse to state my name for the third time. It’s how I do. And I believe that’s fair! You may have pieced together by now that that is in fact what happened on this particular weekend. It takes two to tango, after all!
Anyway, you know that 21st-century, ubiquitous saying “FOMO”? It stands for Fear Of Missing Out and I believe that this is what I suffer from when I think that going out to “da cluuub” is a good idea. Perhaps it is a hangover from reading too many magazines as an impressionable teenager, within which everyone seems to have their ish together and do it all while wearing the hottest designer clothes, bagging the hottest man and chucking back the hottest cocktail (not literally, ouch). Now, these people aren’t real, and I know this because those same magazines always have “stories” where they have “real-life experiences” from “real people”, all of whom they never identify and whom I am convinced do not really exist. However, because I was used to seeing people like “Sandra, 27” who worked in a “high-level corporate job” waxing lyrical on “the current donut-eating epidemic sweeping Australian workplaces”. Perhaps the “stories” are more glamorous-sounding (although really, what’s more glamorous than donuts?), but the message is the same: Other People Are Out Doing More Fun Stuff Than You.
Thankfully, I’ve stopped reading magazines and even most online trash. If I do, my BS-ometer is getting more finely tuned and also, I just don’t have the energy to take on any silly problems right now. My life is consumed with enough of those, working in a kindergarten and being surrounded by seven 6-year-olds all talking to me at once and giving me unsolicited information about how their mothers are “nice outside but not nice at home” (we’re still working on the hand-raising thing).
I know you’re all dying to know: will I ever go out again? Am I, in actual fact, giving up the “club lyf” for good? Well, I have never resided in that circle and I don’t plan on doing so any time soon. I prefer to relax with loved ones and do things that are meaningful to me – and while I do love dancing and having a laff with friends, I can’t really be bothered with all of the rigamorale involved in clubbing. Seriously, it takes a lot for me to get vertical, let alone put on My Face for a night out on the regular. It may float some people’s boats, but it certainly does not, sir, float mine (unless it’s my birthday… then all bets are off).
And with that, I am going to enjoy my Friday night in with my (Gav’s) Apple TV, some soju (what?) and our electric heater. Because this little dynamo of a heater is surely sent from the gods and warrants me spending all of my free time with it. If you felt it, you’d understand. Its amber glow warms my whole being (soul included) and ain’t no cover charge gonna do that for you.
Goodnight all!
Steph x