It’s Thursday and the weekend is tomorrow. Once again I feel that dread of not having plans that make me feel like I’m making the most of my twenties. I feel like I should be doing more, having more fun, experiencing more things. Where does this pressure come from? The urgency and weight of expectations that I heave on my weekends actually detracts from my ability to enjoy them. In thinking that my weekend isn’t up to standard, I create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Who even sets these standards anyway? I do stuff. Sometimes I go out, sometimes I stay in, why is one better than the other?

Maybe I’m more affected by social media than I thought. Maybe I’ve internalised what a good weekend should look like through what is shown on Instagram and Facebook. But no one ever posts about a quiet night in snuggled up on the couch, watching a movie and eating takeaways with friends. No one ever posts about just spending time with yourself, reading in bed with a cup of tea.

We are so obsessed with being seen as doing something that we forget to just be. This is so cliché (and I kind of hate that I’m saying this but also secretly love it as well) but – we are human beings, not human doings. We should celebrate what it means to just be. We can’t always be doing stuff because that is fucking exhausting. We (I) need to learn to become more comfortable in sitting in the quiet times and just being – either with other people or alone. I think there are many of us who are scared to be by ourselves. But maybe for those of us who are scared, it’s more important to practice this?

I think we all need to practice the art of being to some extent – some more than others. I definitely do. The trouble is, I don’t know what being looks like. I only know what doing looks like. Being is this vague intangible concept – what does it mean to just be?