What happens when you stop going out partying, but then decide to try and keep up with the friends who still do

You are sitting on your bed the next day, it's just gone 10pm, it's a Saturday night, and all you can think about is how much you just want to go to sleep. To curl up under the duvet and give your tired, partied out feet a rest. To sleep in a proper bed, rather than on your friend's sofa, which was leather, so very cold, and you got poked in the middle of the night (read morning) by a sneaky tv remote that had hidden itself behind a cushion. But then you realise... you're only 25, you shouldn't be considering bed at this time. It's the weekend for crying out loud. Well do you know what I think to that?

Sod it.

I don't feel the need to go out partying all the time anymore. To try and piece together the hazy blur of the previous drunken night from embarassing pictures and even more mortifying stories kindly regailed to you by your "friends" the following day. No, I find it weird to say it, but I don't want that anymore. I was talking with a friend of mine last night about how weird the different paths people take in life are. I could honestly tell you right now, hand on heart, that a year ago I wasn't planning on settling down anywhere in the near future. And yet I have, and I am happier now than I was back then. I've done the crazy things, the messing around and the ridiculously drunken nights. I've got that out of my system (which apparently means I may have avoided having a mid-life crisis, result!), and to be honest, before I met Edd I was getting bored of going out. It was always the same place, the same faces, and the same feeling of emptiness the next day. And the dodgy stomach of course. But now, I am happy going out once a month, if that. It brings the fun back to it, and I appreciate it a lot more. I wouldn't change my nights in snuggled up watching a film, or even just feeling exhausted from running around after a 5 year old all day, for all the free drinks in Swansea. I'm not saying that I'm becoming a hermit, a social leper of sorts. Not at all. I'm a very sociable person, and always will be. I guess I'm just saying that I feel as though I've grown up and found my place in life. Even if my nights out do involve lovely pictures such as this.....

So, here I am, 25 years young, 10.20pm on a Saturday night, saying, Goodnight all, I'm off to the Land of Nod.