Meet-ups

My life often takes a very cyclical approach. Every Friday, I flip the switch to rage, and go on a 72 hour bender with no regard for my future, my well being or anyone but myself. I am selfish, I have a hidden agenda, I'm hedonistic, I’m the worst. But because I am fun, and honest about this people tend to forgive me. The next stage is the hangover/anxiety stage. This comes about Sunday nights and I get really upset. Part of me wants to keep partying, extend the weekend, don’t give up on the fun. The other part of me is consumed with dread, waking up in 7 hours and getting ready for a full week of work. Because obviously you always tell yourself you will plan for your week Sunday evening, perhaps do the prudent thing and make a list of goals to accomplish, but then someone has the bright idea to do bloodys and brunch and you find yourself drooling on the couch at 1 in the morning realizing that how bad you will it to happen you still have to wait a full week for another episode of Mad Men/Eastbound/Californication etc. So you go to bed, you don’t really sleep because of your extreme anxiety about how ill prepared you are to get curb stomped by the realities of the real world in a few short hours…

But somehow you figure it out. You take a scalding hot shower at 6 in the morning, almost melting your skin off, you drink 7 cups of coffee and on pure adrenaline you make it through your Monday. Onward to step 3: the depression. This is when you think about your life from a mature perspective, you are out of endorphins for the week so nothing but negative thoughts consume you. When will I stop behaving like a child? People around me are financially stable, and upwardly mobile. I should get a girlfriend…Jesus why is Monday tv so bad. I am unhappy, I should move home. This phase is miserable to go through, but it kind of serves an important purpose, it kicks your ass into gear a little bit. So you go crush it at work on Tuesday and you are feeling a little better. By the end of Wednesday you are feeling like a fucking Greek god,  you are ready to rewrite the employee manual to success, why was I being such a whiny bitch. I call this the return to form. Phase 4…and by Thursday night if you aren’t at karaoke with your friends or playing Softball it’s because you are resting up for a particularly epic weekend…Friday afternoon comes along and we start the cycle over.

Based on those numbers I spend roughly 4/7 of my life happy. I think it’s fair to chalk Monday up as a universal loss across the board. No one will ever like Mondays. Sunday night anxiety, it exists too…I have conducted field research and everyone is a little on edge as they lay down Sunday night. But there has to be a better way to fill those early week nights that I often find myself wallowing in my own misery, crying in the dark, wondering where my life went wrong. I thought for a while that I just need roommates. At least if we lay on the couch together we won’t be alone. Twas a novel hypothesis, but I had to reject it. Doing something depressing with others, does not necessarily make it exciting. If anything, it compounds the sadness.

Then one day I was walking down the beach, debating whether or not to pull a Norman Maine (I’ll save you the google search, this is a reference to committing suicide via walking into the ocean and drowning. A Star is Born 1954) and I see a group of people playing dodgeball on the beach. Well that’s fucking cool, I wish I had a group of friends that played dodgeball on the beach on Tuesday nights. Their leader caught me leering and invited me to play. Fuck ya I want to play. After an hour or so we all went to a local bar and grabbed some beers, it was like the best Tuesday night ever. As I was about to formally ask the group to adopt me as one of their friends I saw a couple of the members exchanging phone numbers. That’s weird I thought, why wouldn’t these good buddies have each other’s number? Then a girl reached her hand across the table and introduced herself…wait? How do you all know each other?

“We don’t man, that was a meet up.”

What the fuck is a meet up?

More or less there are a lot of people that want to do shit but can’t find people to do it because their friends are lame or they are new to the city, so it is basically a social network that connects people with shared interests to do fun stuff.

Obviously my mind was blown. It takes a lot for me to ask a group of strangers if I can join them in something, I don’t know if it’s fear of rejection instilled in my mind from when I was 8 years old and the older neighborhood kids wouldn’t let me play or what, but that shit just doesn’t fly with me…but if I can just like respond yes to an open call-out…I’m there all fucking day.

I delved into this mysterious world of “meet-ups” they really have it all. There is no reason to stay in ever unless you really want to. Meet-ups for people who want to go see the Hunger Games and then drink whiskey afterward and talk about it? Check. Meet-ups for people who want to play beach volleyball and then go get a medium rare steak dinner? O ya… Meet-ups for people who had a rough day and want to get shit canned on a Wednesday? Definitely.

Now, I surmise these meet-ups are a tool to expand your network of friends, and sure there are probably some weirdos out there. I bet it tends to be a bit awkward when the creepy meet-up guy asks you for your number and you have to tell him, I don’t think we should see each other again. (Girls must have to do this after bad dates all the time, the idea is excruciatingly painful) I’m sure eventually it will just turn into a means of finding new groups of chicks to bang, but like honestly right now I’m just an innocent user trying to replace my Monday-Wednesday mental funk with some putt putt or laser tag. I don’t see anything wrong with that at all…and if I develop a love for spear fishing out of it or Persian speed dating? So be it. Because coastal ocean kayaking with others is better than coastal ocean kayaking alone.