There have been many times when I’ve heard a thirty-something friend of mine say “I’m getting old for that” or “I used to be able to ______, but now I can’t because my body doesn’t work the same way as it used to when I was younger.”

I’ve been guilty of saying both of those lines myself.

However, a lot of the time I realize that the things that I used to do when I was younger but now feel like are harder to do in my thirties are things that I never really liked to do in the first place.

Here are three examples:

-Going clubbing (I always disliked it, but now happily have the ‘I’m too old for this’ excuse)

-Starving myself thin (This sucked! It just felt like a necessity in my teens and twenties. Now I’m just like ‘I’m beyond this bullshit. I eat for strength, health and enjoyment.’)

-Drinking until I was sick (Umm, who wants to be sick? The proper phrasing for avoiding this now is: “I know my limits, thank you.”)

However, something I used to do when I was younger that I’d stopped doing for awhile but always liked was staying up late and getting a crazy amount done at once. You see, I’m a night owl by nature, hence I work best at night. Since the world isn’t built for night owls, I feel like what I’m supposed to do is get up at 5:30am (crack of dawn) and hammer out work. Start with the gym, maybe marathon training, and then work steadily until evening, when I should settle down with some TV and food and a reasonable 10:30 bedtime. But this is exhausting to me. What I like better is staying up late, sleeping in, dawdling for quite awhile, then getting into a routine of an afternoon gym session and working hardcore into the night.

And I recently realized that the reason I haven’t done this in awhile wasn’t because I was getting older but because I wasn’t single.

I matched my schedule to the person I was dating. I felt guilty and weird working into the night. I’d get up early and would never get as much done because I never really got into my peak work stride.

And now that I’ve been single for a little while, I’m starting to get back into the habit of making my own schedule and getting crazy amounts done at night, on my own.

So let’s add another awesome perk to being single in your thirties, or any older years: go back to doing the things you liked to do when you were younger but may have put aside for someone else. Now’s your time! You are still very young! Enjoy it!