Hannah Witton is one of my favourite bloggers, and recently she posted this blog post about how she feels about accepting that she is growing up, not in the physiological ageing sort of way but in a personality and activities sort of way. She talks about rejecting feeling guilt for being ‘boring’ for liking what she likes to do. When I read this I was so satisfied by how much it all made sense to me. It was like someone else had finally said all the things I’ve been feeling.

I’ve always said that even though I’m 19 years old, I feel like mentally I’m in my 40’s. I feel like I got old before I was even young. I would much rather stay in with a cup of tea and a good movie than bother going out to a club. It may seem unusual for a person as extroverted as myself because a loud, social, fun situation should be one in which I thrive, no? But I think because I get so engaged in so many activities and groups in my life, it seems natural that I should prioritise.

I’ve never really felt like a normal teenager, The general idea for us youths is that we love to hang out, be adventurous and get drunk – this culture is especially prevalent at university – but this is something I’ve never felt that I connected to. Sure, I’ll go out and get drunk every now and then, and I will have fun when I’m spending time with my friends but I have just never seen the ‘sesh’ as a priority or even a necessity. I went to house parties and what not when that started to be a thing in 5th and 6th year and we had a great time, but when I finally hit the age of legal alcohol consumption, I just couldn’t really see what the fuss was about. I’m not opposed to drinking alcohol but it just seems like a weird concept, spending all your money to pee it all away later, and for what? A night that you might not remember the next day? Hmm.

It always seemed like a bit of a waste of time and money to me when I already have such a busy schedule. With school and dance classes and competitions, rehearsing for shows, what was the benefits of drinking? I do understand the benefits of hanging out with friends but those two things don’t have to be collated. In fact, I would argue that using a night out as time spent with a friend is also wasted because half of the time it’s way too loud for you to even talk to one another. For this reason I am a much bigger advocate of a cocktail bar than a club any day. Within my busy-ness, if I’m lucky enough to make social arrangements with my friends, then I want to take full advantage of being together and talking to one another, catching up on each other’s news.

Then I came to uni… Time to live it up as a Fresher? A full time career in partying? I can’t think of anything more exhausting. I luckily never lived in student accommodation but got to live in a flat with my sister. I say this is lucky because I don’t think I would have fit in with the general lifestyle of halls, from what I’ve heard and experienced. I do think that over the past two and half years at uni I have found out that it’s more about where you go and who with that will affect your quality of night – give me cheesy tunes and let’s dance all night rather needing to be beyond drunk to cope with the mundanity of electro tunes in a disgustingly dirty club. I still think it can sometimes be a waste of money but indulging in dancing all night can have its perks at the time.

I still recognise that my viewpoint is odd compared to my demographic, but I’m happy to be odd rather than doing things I don’t particularly enjoy.

The point of this whole discussion is that I’m glad to see that somebody else has felt the way that I do and I absolutely agree that there is absolutely nothing wrong with do what makes you happy, no matter how ‘boring’ other people might think that makes me.

Big thank you to Hannah Witton for writing an awesome post that was so relatable and comforting for me! I would totally recommend you checking her out!