The Friday Night Conundrum

As a single girl in NYC, every week I face the Friday night conundrum: to go out, or not to go out?

When I’m dating someone, I love spending a quiet Friday night at home with him. Watch a movie, cook or get takeout, and basically just cuddle up in bed until I drift off to sleep at the geriatric hour of 9pm or so. (To explain: after a long week of work, especially with my current travel schedule where I don’t get home until 2am on Friday mornings, that’s pretty much all I have the motivation to do on a Friday night). This is all fine and dandy when you’re in a relationship – it’s the perfect relaxing kickoff to the weekend and it’s quality time with your significant other!

Unfortunately, when you’re single, it’s kind of pathetic to stay home by yourself on a Friday night. Besides being pretty anti-social, you’re also not really likely to meet Mr. Right by doing so. People always tell singles that the best way to meet a guy who fits your lifestyle is just to do what you want to do, because then you can meet someone who does the same things and has like interests. However, that advice does not really apply to sitting in your apartment. (Unless Mr. Right happens to be the Thai takeout delivery guy). Plus, when it comes to actually setting up a first or second date, I’d much rather meet up on a Saturday, when I’m not exhausted and cranky and can better hold a conversation and be my charming self 🙂

Happy hours can be the perfect compromise to this dilemma – you get to go out and be social, but if you drink fast (I am a champ on this front), you can still call it a night at a really early hour and get a good night’s sleep. If you don’t drink too fast, you can even do a bit of drunk cooking before you hit the hay (seriously, check out that link – she reminds me of me but with awesome theme music and a camera). Happy hours let you basically do all the same activities that I named above, but you get a little social time in first. And you’ll still be up bright and early on Saturday morning with a whole weekend ahead of you!

The other option I sometimes like is going out by myself. I love meeting new people, and going by myself means I can talk to whoever I please and leave whenever I want to – and no one is going to notice/judge if I have just one drink and head home. (In fact, it’s when you have a lot of drinks by yourself and head home that you probably deserve judgment). I’ve met a lot of interesting characters this way, so it can be a good fallback if all your friends are either in with their significant others or not planning to go out until they go clubbing at midnight (yikes, totally not my scene).

Tonight, I was originally supposed to go to a happy hour. Unfortunately, it just got cancelled 🙁 My new options for the night are a women’s beer tasting, going for late night drinks with a friend after his date (assuming it’s not successful), the aforementioned going out solo, or staying home and catching up on my DVR. Given that I’m working from home today and am feeling pretty comfy in bed, the DVR catchup is mighty tempting… but the fact that I haven’t yet had any human contact today is also making me feel like I should leave my apartment and be social.

So, tonight – to go out or not to go out?