Well, it’s the Friday before a long weekend, and all is right with the world. Almost. Sort of.
My next class starts on Wednesday, and I feel compelled to pack as much fun into the weekend as humanly possible before I start doing the simultaneous school and work thing again. But packing fun into the weekend isn’t fun. It’s like work. Because when you spend any amount of time beyond 5 seconds trying to plan your fun, you’re not having fun anymore. It’s like trying to force clowns into a clown car, and then when the clown car is full, stuffing the clown car with sausage making equipment and forcing the clowns to make sausage. Stuffing minced-meat into miles of sausage casings, and then stuffing those sausages into a mini-fridge in the center of the clown car. That is not fun. It is sweaty, and un-hygenic, and disgusting, and I applaud the FDA for shutting down Buttons & Bingo Brand Sausages- The Sausage Made from by Clowns.
I can’t seem to relinquish the undergraduate lifestyle; the desire to do whatever I want, whenever I want, damn the consequences. These days everything has to be planned, and everybody wants advance notice, and nobody wants to do things at the drop of a hat. It’s for those reasons that every weekend of my summer is already booked. It makes me feel like such a Poindexter to have such a delicately scheduled social calendar.
And I know what you’re thinking: “Don’t be such a whiny little bitch ACW. The world is full of socially-retarded, maladroit ultranerds who don’t even buy calendars anymore because they never get to use them anyway. You should feel positively honored that other people want to hang out with you.”
Believe me, I am. I’d just rather hang out than have to go all douchey and pull up my calendar every time somebody says, “Hey wanna hang out on Friday?” Admittedly though, part of the problem is my poor memory. If I wasn’t so bad at remembering things, I could probably just say, “Yeah, I’m free”, but I’ve got the memory of a 5 1/2 inch floppy disk, so I have to consult the calendar every time. But the other part of the problem is other people. In college, everybody played it by ear. Whatever happened, happened, and a good time would be had regardless. These days fun is the imperative, and if we don’t have a fun-check every five minutes, we might accidentally let precious fun-time go by without consciously acknowledging that we’re having fun, and then we have to get out the balance book for our fun-time and make a little frowny face between 2:38 and 2:41, and then make a note that we made a note that we weren’t having any fun.
But once the fun-time balance book goes away- watch out! Fun times will be had. It’s guaranteed in our Terms of Use.
I imagine we’re going to reach a point in our society where people are fully dressed in business clothes, bluetooth headset firmly lodged in our ear, power-walking down the street, leaving one Starbucks on our way to another one, bellowing, “I AM HAVING FUN! THIS IS FUN!” over and over again while chugging energy drinks, and high-fiving strangers that look like us- eyes bulging out of their heads, forehead veins throbbing mightily, mouth pulled into a rigid rictus that balances tenuously between terror and insanity.
That’s not what I want! I just want to hang out! Fuck! Relaxing shouldn’t be so hard.
Sadly, I’ve fallen prey to having my weekends intricately planned as well. I’m talking strategizing with the hubby about who can be dropped off for a visit here while the other takes time to run errands and then swoops back by to pick up the other for another social engagement.
Have a beer. Ten, even. You need it.
Unless of course you have to check your calendar first. I’ll understand.
Did you know that “having fun” is listed as one of the perks of working at McDonald’s? I saw the sign this morning when ordering my big ass iced coffee.
I have listed out my fun activities for this weekend. For that, I am sad. Hopefully I’ll throw caution to the wind and be drunk for 3 days.
Summer classes? Enjoy.
At least you got this weekend. My MBA classes started back this week so my weekend involves, mulcing, party, party again, spend Monday reading International Microeconomics and doing linear programming spreadsheets. Hopefully the wireless router will allow me to do that from the back yard with beer in hand.
Undergrad was easier because we had no serious job to cloud our brains and you could just hit bar number one at about 5 and then proceed from there to where ever something better was on foot to the next. Plus I could drink the equivelent of a full night out now as my starter volume.
Don’t forget to stretch before relaxing, wouldn’t want you to blow out those quads. Warm up first, ease into it.
This is true. My husband pulled a groin muscle having fun.
I lol’d.
I don’t have a calendar. And I forget that I made plans. Then, the person I was supposed to meet calls me and says, “Where are you?” And I’m like, “Oh, shit! Be right there!” Yeah. Hee.
per your comment on my blog, i would never want you to miss the drive-by slow-motion car accident that is my life, and that is why i am privatizing, so that i might once again bewilder the masses with my brand of awesome/crazy… without the (seriously not getting that he is ex) exBoy lurking around.
“These days fun is the imperative, and if we don’t have a fun-check every five minutes, we might accidentally let precious fun-time go by without consciously acknowledging that we’re having fun…..”
This is known as getting old. It probably won’t be long before your weiner goes on the fritz.
OY
TO
THE
VEY!!
I wish I had a nickel every time someone uttered that very phrase (title of your post)… or its companion, Are you working hard, or hardly working?
“It probably won’t be long before your weiner goes on the fritz…”
I *cannot* stop laughing at that comment.
Sweet.
I got your clown sausage right here, pal!
So… are you free on Friday or what?
The worst is when I make conflicting plans. Or I agree to do something on one day and then I get a better offer later on.
Luckily I’m good at lying.
Which is why I hate people and want to move to the side of a mountain and raise goats. Alone.
And my girlfriend gets pissed off whenever she asks me if I want to do something two weeks in advance and I give her the whole “but what if something better and more spontaneous comes up right before then and I have to tell my buddies that I already promised my girlfriend that I’d go to her best-friend’s baby’s baptism.”
I want my free time damn it!
Unfortunately, I’ve passed that point in my life. Hubby and I have become the social recluses of our (former) friends/family circle. I believe everyone thinks we are out having the time of our lives with everyone else. They do not realize that we do not hang out with everyone. We have actually been discussing this at length the past two weeks and realized that we need to just schedule things and make things happen.
Yeah, I miss just being out in the suite and things just happening.
Oops.. I mean, they don’t realize that we do not hang out with ANYone.
Well my social life is in complete upheaval for reasons already discussed. Right now having all of my fun planned out way in advance as much as possible, knowing how I’m going to fill all my free time (I dropped my summer class) is a huge part of how I’m going to get through it, but that’s just me. Before I was taking classes, socializing was more spontaneous, but our plans were kind of lazy, we often just walked to the bar 9 doors down.