How many of you readers are introverts?
An introvert is shy, quiet, and can be defined as a loner by those who aren't. If you consider yourself an introvert, it is nothing to be ashamed of and you just love living a quiet life that best suits your personality. It is perfectly okay if you define yourself as an introvert, but how can you fit your lifestyle outside of your comfort zone while still being social? There are different ways you can incorporate your social activities and the answer is to switch your weekends. Flipping your weekends and weekdays helps you still have a social life while still having the weekends to yourself. The questions are why should we flip it and how can it benefit me as a person?
The majority of people work the normal 8-5 or 9-6 job which means for that whole day we are just completely surrounded by people and just waiting for the work day to be over with so we can hurry and get home. If you plan your activities or gatherings after work, that will pretty much free up your weekend since you already hung out with friends, co-workers, or family.
Why should I plan my activities during the weekday? The reason why planning your social activities during the weekdays is smart is because those activities will be shorter. Who wants to stay out late on a weekday when you have to get up early for work the next morning? Not me. That way you can still hang out with your peers or family for two hours max while you’re not obligated to go home near midnight or past as you would on the weekend. Attending gatherings during the week can also mean smaller groups. Not everybody wants to do something during the week because they would just rather go home after a long day of work, rest, and wait for the weekend. For those that do not like to surround themselves with larger crowds, it’s best to avoid weekend outings.
When your weekends are free, you have that time to focus on yourself. Focusing on yourself equals self-care. Yay! In all honesty, I absolutely love when my weekends are free with no plans at all! Those are the weekends I look most forward to. Regrouping, reenergizing, and rebooting. I love the quiet and I love the fact of not having to plan around social activities. If you are an anxious person, devoting yourself to these free weekends are important because it allows you to have a clear mind. Spending your weekend at home doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be sleeping the whole entire time. People reboot themselves into forms of self-care that works best for them. Whether it be reading, yoga, bike riding, cleaning, naps throughout the day, taking a relaxing bath, baking, binging on Hulu or Netflix (guilty), etc. All these activities can help a person recharge themselves before the start of the new work week.
The easy part is the idea of planning almost all social gatherings during the weekday, but how can you get the ball rolling? Scheduling these gatherings will obviously need to take some prioritizing along with getting your friends to agree to even want to hang out during the week. It can be a bit overwhelming having to figure this out, but there is a bit of an easy way to do this. Do you know which of your friends are introverts like yourself and which are social birds? Once you have that list, it would be making planning much easier on yourself. That way you hang out with the circle of friends that are introverts and when you feel like occasionally hanging out on the weekend, you can hang out with your friends that are social. Not all introverts devote every single weekend to themselves.
If you are starting to feel overwhelmed by feeling like you’re not being that great of a friend or your friends are starting to distinguish you as the “boring friend” that never wants to hang out on the weekends, don’t let it get to you. Those type of friends are the ones that I wouldn’t want to associate myself with anyway. My true friends would understand that this is who I am and, of course, we can occasionally hang out on the weekends, but I would mostly prefer the weekdays. That way I can give all my social energy to those circle of friends instead of just wasting it on the ones who think I am boring.
Do not feel obligated to say yes to every single activity that you are invited to and don’t feel the pressure that it is mandatory that you must do something every single weekend. Who cares if you didn’t go out on the weekend? The only person it should matter to is you, so do not feel embarrassed if someone asks you what you did over the weekend and you reply with 'nothing'. Their idea of nothing may seem like you did a whole lot of nothing, but your definition of nothing can mean a wide variety of things. For example, Saturday morning I did yoga, for lunch I made an healthy delicious meal and ate it outside, and that night, I took a relaxing bath while I read a good book.
In conclusion, don’t ever feel that it is necessary for you to make excuses for being who you are or letting the added pressure from others take over how you’re feeling. If you are happy, enjoying, and loving life the way it is, then continue doing what you’re doing. It’s your life and it should be lived the way you want it to without the worry of judgement of others.
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” -Albert Einstein