Spending Time with Friends
Published:
Spending time with friends isn’t valued the same by everyone.
Some thrive on it. Some would rather be alone. And for most, they enjoy it in moderation and depending on who they are with and what they are doing. I fall in the majority but leaning toward the alone side of the spectrum because I feel guilty spending too much time with friends, as if I could be doing something better and more productive with my time. This feeling permeates into the times when I actually do hang out with them. I bring my laptop, or a book, in hopes of finding slivers of downtime to sneak in work or send an extra email. I have these action items listed under the hangout and rarely do I ever get through them so later when looking back and scheduling new items, I’m almost always left backlogged and scrambling to make up for the lost time.
But why should it be this way? I should feel comfortable “wasting” time with my friends and being in their company because after all, they’re my best friends that I’m comfortable sharing everything and anything with. The regret I experience for not having done the work I had planned to do during hangouts dilutes the quality time I spend with friends which is a lose-lose situation. Not to mention that this is a rather bad look for me in front of them, building up the image that I’m a work fiend who could care less about our relationship. That I couldn’t care less about them, especially when I’m not proactively celebrating my achievements and goals with them. They see it as withholding information and not valuing our relationship enough to share these details of my life with them when in fact it’s usually the opposite.