Hi, my name is Caroline, and I’m an introvert who suffers from FOMO. You might have seen me exhilarated at a party, or dancing wildly, or laughing over lunch with a dozen or so other writers. What a social butterfly, you might have thought. How friendly she is! How warm! I do glam up and go to parties. I’ve been so honored and excited to be a keynote speaker at book events where I love talking with and meeting new people, as well as old friends. I know I might seem as enthusiastic as a collie, but part of the reason is because of what you don’t see: The hours I practice my speech, right down to the hand motions. My scribbling on topics of conversation so I won’t become mute. I do indeed have a great time at events, but I also have something more important: A time limit. I am never, ever, the last one to leave an event, but often one of the first; after an hour or so, my nerve endings begin to fray. The noise is too much for me, the crowds. All I can think about is curling up on our couch, reading next to my husband, or the two of us watching a film.
Over the years, I’ve stressed so much about missing out. What if I didn’t go to that big party that everyone else was going to? What if I didn’t go to a writers’ dinner? I stare at the photos, at the fun everyone is having, the people everyone is getting to meet, and I feel genuine pain and yearning. If I were there, would that famous writer be sitting next to me and be my friend? If I went to that party, would I be splashed all over social media, too?
It’s not that I’m anti-social. I have a bounty of friends I love, but I love to see them one-on-one, and not in a group. Last week, I met a friend at our favorite café for coffee, for wine, for hours of talk. After two hours, we both stretched and had to go, and on my walk home, I thought: This is perfection. And that’s when I realized, my fear of missing out had nothing to do with not wanting to miss a great party, dinner, or occasion. It had to do with what I really needed. And I knew where that came from.
You guessed it. My family.
My mother was always urging me not to miss out on things. And she’d warn me about the costs. If a group of my girlfriends was going out, go, too, because they might talk about me if I didn’t. If there was a movie that everyone was talking about, but I hadn’t shown interest, I should think again, lest anyone think I was a dullard.
Missing out. Oh my God.
But there was another family component. My mother and sister promoted the idea that I was missing out because everyone wanted me to miss out, that no one actually wanted to spend time with me, and they had good reason why. When I didn’t get a part I wanted in the junior high school play, my mother told me it was because of the way I looked, like a wild woman with all that hair. “You have only yourself to blame for not being able to participate,” she said quietly.
No wonder I feel such a push-pull. When I hear of a big lunch for many people, but I haven’t been invited, my first thought is what’s wrong with me? Don’t they want me to be there? But then my second thought is what if they do want me there, because then I have to worry about how long the lunch will last, who I sit next to, and what if no one wants to sit with me?
Recently, I was heart-to-hearting with a novelist friend about all these parties and social media, and she told me, “Think about the time you have left in your life. Think about how you can love every single minute. There’s nothing you have to do. There is also nothing you have to miss.”
I don’t fear missing out anymore. I will do my best to come to your party, dinner, or event, and if I cannot manage it, I still love being invited, feeling wanted. If everyone is learning to deep dive, I will cheer everyone on, ask questions, and marvel over your photos, but I’ll stay on dry land. And as for that glorious time, party, or event I missed out on that everyone is talking about? I’m so glad they all had a great time without me. And I mean it.
I may never be one of the It girls, or the people who have their pulse on everything new that’s going on, but that’s never been the sort of person that I gravitate toward myself. Me, I love the human who doesn’t follow the crowd, who makes their own rules, and who lives their own badass life.
