Having somewhere to be that matters more than the drama is its own kind of power.

Drama runs on spare attention. When your afternoons are empty, the group chat becomes the main event, and a small slight can expand to fill the whole evening. When something real is waiting, the same slight stays the size it actually is. Nothing has to be said about it, and nobody has to lose.

Put one thing on the calendar this week that you would be annoyed to miss: practice, a shift, a run, somebody you like. Notice how much less interesting the pile-on looks when you have somewhere to go at six.