If you find yourself turning downtime with friends and family, to make room for work… minimum wage work- this is for you. You’re the type of person who feels like every day of your life must be scheduled. You feel like if you’re not constantly working toward something- that you’re wasting time, or missing an opportunity to make money. All your life you’ve filled every spare moment of my week with a new extra-curricular. Now it’s that, more jobs, more classes, and less and less free time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this necessarily. I mean, you need the money and you want to graduate.

However,

In your quest to not waste time and money, I think you’ve missed opportunities. Family events, quality time with friends, and time to even get to know yourself.

There's no realistic reason why you needed to pick up a third job, and flush away any opportunity to spend time with friends. You know, those people you see for an hour every other week? Or family? It seems like you can’t find the time to see them once a month. You’re so lucky to live near family, but you spend almost no time with them. You’re so lucky to have the amazing friends that you do- but it’s almost like you can’t give them the time of day. You used to have hobbies, but it seems like there’s always some reason you can’t now.

Relax. “Life happens when you’re making other plans”. Your minimum wage job won’t be there for you. Let’s be honest, the money isn’t even that good. Even if it were, the money's nice for a while- but it doesn't last. You won't look back on your years in college and wish that you'd worked as a cashier more often. You won't wish you could go back to relive every weekend you spent being a server in a bar.

So here’s the point. We can afford to make time. For whatever it is. We can make time for family members’ birthday parties. We can make time to sit and do absolutely nothing with friends once in awhile. Don’t take this as advice to be lazy. Don’t stop trying as hard as you can with everything in your life. Just don’t forget to take time for things that actually matter. You can always get another minimum wage job, but you can’t go back on opportunities missed with people who matter.