Let your guilty pleasures no longer be guilty

A lot of the things I enjoy in life may be things that the average person might find strange or weird.

To fall asleep every night, I love listening to YouTube videos of people tapping on random items, also known as autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR. I don’t like listening to people eat, but other people do, and that’s okay.

I also love the show 90 Day Fiancé, not only for the humour it brings but the genuine people on the show looking for love who may think finding someone abroad is the only option they have, yet being strong enough to realize they are being used for a green card and dumping their significant other on to the street.

The problem with these things is that there is no problem at all, yet people feel ashamed to be linked to them and believe that indulging in these activities is a “guilty” pleasure. Personally, I believe you should never feel ashamed of something you enjoy or are passionate about.

Take for example the boy band One Direction; at the ripe age of 14, I became obsessed with the band. Many people thought the boys weren’t talented, or that the band was stupid and their music was terrible.

Their music isn’t terrible and they are very talented – their solo careers all speak for that.

I don’t need to defend a band that has billions of streams and has made millions of dollars of CD’s and tours. Yet I feel the need to, but not anymore.

Just because someone doesn’t like the same music as you doesn’t mean an artist is bad.

I for one am not a fan of heavy metal music, but that doesn’t discredit that those artists or other people can’t enjoy their music, it just isn’t my cup of tea.

Enjoying something shouldn’t be policed by other people because they have deemed it uncool.

If a boy you like says that One Direction is a dumb band and their music sucks, he will need to be introduced to the song Stockholm Syndrome before you promptly block his number.

I also enjoy talking to myself in the car as if I’m on a podcast, I enjoy tea with too much milk in it, I enjoy holding my cat re-enacting The Lion King movies and I enjoy swearing every other word because frankly, they’re still just words.

These things that may come across weird to other people are things I unapologetically enjoy because I have learned that living your life for other people will just make you extremely unhappy in the end.

I will continue to listen to ASMR true crime stories to fall asleep and then retell the stories at work the next day because I thought it was interesting, but being told in ASMR is a lot less scary so I can still sleep afterwards.

I will continue to blast One Direction on road trips because, quite frankly, I spent five years of my life dedicated to them, their music and will have every lyric engrained in my brain for the rest of my life because each and every song is a banger.

The less I’ve felt guilty about liking things that are uncommon, the more happy I’ve become in my life and no approval from any person could feel better than that.