Legitimate Reasons To Stay Home On A Friday Night

I’m going to let you guys in on something – you do not have to go out on a Friday night. I repeat: You do not have to go out on a Friday night. The universe will not fold in on itself if you decide that you want to stay home. Even better? You do not have to apologize for it. From the ages of, I don’t know, roughly 18-23, you tell your friends that you’re staying in on a Friday night and everyone looks at you like you just told them you’re running away to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It’s like, look, I know I’m the life of your party but I can’t be a beach babe 24-7. Sometimes I need to do me. (‘Doing Me’ typically entails laying on my futon with a jazz cigarette, some Ben & Jerry’s flavor I’ve never heard of before, and a full DVR queue of Degrassi.) I’m going to share with you my cache of perfectly acceptable reasons to stay home on a Friday night.

You have work in the morning. Why do we go out on a Friday for ‘a few drinks’ only to find ourselves making out with a stranger on a broken couch eight hours later? We know we have work in the morning, and we know Saturday-work hangovers are the worst of their kind, mostly because no one else seems to be working or hungover. The people you encounter while working on a Saturday are always accompanied by a smug air of Casual Weekender Who Loves Life (as opposed to your air, which is A Forty Minute Shower Couldn’t Undo The Damage). “Excuse me miss, can you recommend a mid-priced restaurant for my perfectly-coiffed family and I? Oh, oh, also? I think you might need to take the trash out… it smells like a combination of sweaty dog and that time the Sigma Kappa sisters made my pledge class wash their hair with dirty mop water for a week… that smell… oh my god, I think I’m going to be sick…” Just stay home, get some rest, and make Saturday night your bitch.

You’re sick. When you feel like you’re coming down with something, what you should NOT do is try to squeeze in as many drinks as possible before giving in to a three-day Nyquilcaton. Every time you choose hanging out over resting when you’re sick, your body is thinking, “Are you serious? Again? No wonder you’re single. You’re an abusive asshole and I’m going to purposely gain five pounds because I hate you as much as you hate me.”

You’re hungover. Maybe you went a little hard Thursday night? You sat at work all day dreaming of lasagna and tainting the office aesthetic with your stale cigarette aura (it’s not ethereal, it’s gross)? Well, you know what they (I) say – Thursday is the new Friday. People who have successfully mastered post-college socializing have been out every night of the week and are holding on for dear life by the time Friday rolls around. Friday, they’re cuddling a domesticated animal and catching up on Treme, while the amateurs reign over the ~CLuB~ or the ~BaR~ for the next 48 hours. I mean, just tell yourself that until you’re feeling aces again (so, Saturday).

You’re broke. Being on a two-week pay cycle (or better yet, a no-job pay cycle) can sometimes shut your weekend down. The weekend is this hot young thing you’re flirting with at the bar, the one who’s actually a pricey escort. “Hey babe, my name is Friday, I think we’d have sOoOoO much fun together – wait what? You have no money? I see… hold on, let me take this phone call. ‘Mom? The hospit—what?! I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, tops. Oh my god. I hope everything is okay.’ Well, I guess you overheard that very pressing, serious phone call. Gotta run! Call me when you figure out your poor person problem!” Just… stay home and read a book or something. Don’t take shit from that Friday slut.

You feel like it. You don’t need an excuse to stay home. Even god took a day off, you know? And if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me. The bars and the babes will be there next weekend, and the one after, and the one after that, even! Oh my god, you’ll see so many bars and babes in your lifetime that eventually they’ll become totally unremarkable, like toenails or something. They aren’t going anywhere. And neither are you. Chill hard and prosper.