The capacity at which my "Fear Of Missing Out" exists is truly comical, considering I'm the one who triggers the act of me missing out on so much. I can't fault anyone except myself. There are outside factors to why I've convinced myself to miss out on as much as I do. Aside from the imbalance in my brain that screams "MAKE HER BODY SHAKE AND HER CHEST TIGHTEN WHEN SHE STARTS TO DO SOMETHING NEW," I very much feel like I'm missing out on vital things that, I would assume, should be shaping my twenties or my entire life as a whole. Very frequently I push myself to do something by saying "when are you going to get the opportunity again?" If it is something I don't really have any interest in doing, but I'm doing it just for the experience, and I don't get a gut wrenching feeling when I think about the dullness my life will exude after deciding against it, I don't do it. However, I know damn well there are things I should be doing that I just don't do, and consequently end up thinking "well, that would have changed a lot of this outcome," rather than "DAMN IT THAT WOULD HAVE SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACTED MY LIFE WHY DIDN'T I DO THAT, I'M SO DUMB." So, in turn, it ends up not really being a consequence at all. I'm finding it to be a far more present mosquito in my ear recently, however. For example, sitting outside at night, while it's cold, in a sweater, listening to music is one of my favorite things to do ever. There's such a strength in grounding while you're looking at the stars and unapologetically existing. I'm just there. It's fantastic. However, there are nights like tonight where I KNEW this would be an optimal time, both time of night and time of year, to do said thing, and I decided to go on a drive instead. Don't get me wrong, both activities have calming properties, especially when you're just talking through things while driving around, but when I got home, the stars were brighter than ever. My FOMO kicked in again and I started feeling guilty for going on a drive. Immediately I started feeling guilty for not dropping everything and sitting on the ground right then and there, because I'm tired. I would like to sleep. "No, go look at the stars" my head says. "No, go look at the back of your eyelids and dream you're looking at the stars" my heart says. My gut says "just do something. You've already eaten fries from Cookout you didn't need, there's not much other damage you could do tonight." Then I really started thinking about my relationship with my ever present fear of missing out and started to get really down. It has existed for a while. It has become more of an issue in the past few years, seeing deaths of young people and how you can't predict what's around every corner. That's my anxiety kicking in. That's me believing I'm going to die before I'm ever able to do the things I want to do. Bottom line is: death is inevitable, and I have no control over that, and having no control makes me crazy. So here I sit, crazy, writing about my "fear of missing out" problem. I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day. I work, then I come home and don't want to do anything. Then when I want to do something, it's 9pm and I have a solid 2 hours before my eyes start to shut on their own. Night time is when I'm most creative, and while that worked flawlessly for me at 19, 22 year old Chey has learned that she REALLY enjoys sleep. I don't think I've ever liked sleeping as much as I do at this point in my life, but in opposition, I've never felt like I've had more means to create more personal, vulnerable, and well constructed products of my creativity as I do now. My biggest concern is learning how to give myself the time to do things. I devote so much of my time to work, by my own accord, that it seems rather foolish to get angry AT MYSELF for not allowing myself time to do anything because I want to work and I want to be useful in a place I know a) I'm appreciated for what I do and b) I'm getting paid. It's far less about the money than it is the feeling useful, but I digress. The brakes need to be put on somewhere, or the scale needs to be tipped further to the middle. As I've said before, I put in a lot of work at what I do for it to be my job, not my career. I do enjoy meeting people in the chance I get to, and while I'm perhaps not great at active conversation, I still enjoy the conversation, even if I am just listening. I need to start putting in more effort to find the things that make me feel like my days off are worth my days off. I've fallen into such a hole of working, then spending days off either doing nothing or doing the things I didn't have time to do because I was working. Yeah yeah yeah, "that's adulthood," I get it. However, I'm 22. I have so much of my life to be an adult. I need to do something now. I have the means to treat every experience like it's my last time I'm going to experience it, but how do I savor it? I have the means to create experiences and relationships with new people, but how do I start those experiences and relationships without eventually letting myself fall back in a hole of only being concerned with work? Will I ever learn to calm down on being self sufficient and alone, enough to let other people in and distract me from things I'm overly focused on now? Stay tuned