Wednesday, January 8, 2014

True Life: I Have FOMO


Defined, FOMO is the fear of missing out, and to say I have FOMO would be an understatement. I want to be involved in anything and everything, which makes me feel a little stretched thin sometimes. I've lived in Charlotte going on 5 months, and I've stayed here 2 weekends. That's 2 weekends out of 18. I'd say that's a problem. There's just always something else going on in another location that makes me feel as though I need to be there. There are some things that I wouldn't miss for the world, like birthdays, Christmas parties, girls weekends, and the like. But at some point, I'm going to have to learn that it's okay to miss out on a few things here or there.

In college, I had the fear of missing out to some extent. If friends were going out, even if I was super tired or busy, I would manipulate my schedule so I could go too. But, it's only gotten worse since I graduated -- and I think it has to do with holding on to that part of my life.

My best friend and I were talking the other day about how different things are now that college is over and how it's been really hard for us to get used to it. In college, life was "easy." I lived with two of my best friends, the rest of my friends and boyfriend lived no more than 5 minutes away, and my parents were a hop, skip, and jump down I40. It was almost hard to miss out on things because everything was right there surrounding me. 

Working full-time at a demanding job, living four hours away from home, and not having my friends around is definitely different than how life was from college, but I have to start adapting to new life instead of holding on to the old one. Needless to say, I want nothing more than to maintain the relationships I formed in college -- those are my very best friends -- but at the same time, it's okay to adjust to something new, and better yet, want to adjust to something new.

So, I need to remember that I can do anything, but not everything, and that's okay. Fear of missing out is common in our culture, especially with social media advertising anything and everything fun that someone else is doing. But, more than likely, that person has FOMO, too. And that's okay.

I know I'm not the only one...here's to saying no to FOMO.
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