I’m a good friend. After a night of partying at my company’s holiday party, I agreed to dragging Chris and myself out to Brooklyn to drink and catch up with my good friend and her boyfriend, who earlier this week had shoulder surgery and wanted to be close to his apartment for convenience. I told myself that I’d have two drinks to catch up with them and leave, but somehow that ended up being something more like five drinks plus two shots. And we didn’t get home until past 4am. This morning, I woke up and could barely speak. My voice was gone.

Then, the rest of today felt unproductive, as I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish our last weekend in New York before leaving for Melbourne for Christmas, and pretty much nothing got done. Two nights in a row of heavy drinking ruins all productivity. Once upon a time, I could have gotten through this, and now almost at 30, I cannot. I’m so exhausted.