I used to play music or work with musicians for a living, starting about 1974. For those of you who don’t know, working with musicians is pretty much a nonstop party. It’s how you get your degree in Applied Narcotics. So I did that for maybe longer than was necessary.
Now I’m all settled down and married, and when we get home, we don’t really want to go back out somewhere. We each have our own hobbies, and we pursue them, and then go to bed. We go out on the weekends sometimes, or some of her friends will come over. Some evenings if we’re both late getting off work and neither of us feels like cooking, we’ll go out for dinner. We don’t have a big social scene, but we don’t really need one, either. We get along just fine without all that excitement. We’re sociable hermits, or something.
This made me laugh, and I’ll tell you why: a few years ago two other moms and I were on the PTA board at school. Our kids hung out together, had slumber parties, etc. Our husbands were kind of in the background, but “the girls” and I were comparing notes on spouses and we discovered our husbands had a lot in common. Lots of conservations that went, “Oh, Steve likes model planes? John is in a model planes club!” or “Oh, Scott’s a workaholic? So’s John!” We joked that we should get the guys together, but for whatever reason, it didn’t come to pass. “Well, Steve is kind of shy about meeting new people” and “John’s been putting in a lot of overtime these days.”
Well, we finally got everyone to meet. That was three years ago, and since then, we’ve become a huge extended family - taken vacations together, helped one another through hospitalizations, funerals, birthdays, you name it. We go out to dinner one night every month, and spend a lot of weekends together. We’ve NEVER had a social life like this before, and we love it. And we have a name for our extended family group:
Most of my friends here are also my workout partners - we go to the gym around the same time and on the same nights. Fridays they’d pop off to some bar or club after the workout, but I’d just go home and maybe have my girlfriend come over for a game of chess and a movie. The ‘music’ they play at clubs gives me headaches, and there’s an unwritten family rule that basically forbids us to imbibe alcohol in public. I don’t do much going out other than to school and for groceries twice a week.
That’s news to me. I was under the impression that I was manifesting my superpower, the ability exlude a personal SEP field without trying, which is working at only slightly less then normal strength on this board.
For those not familer with the concept, this is a SEP field
Yeah I go out a lot. I like going out drinking with my friends. I hate being home on Thurs, Fri or Sat. I’m not like some people who literally hang out in bars every single night, but I do like to go out and socialize.
See that doesn’t even make any sense to me. In college, we used to go out every night. There was always something going on.
I’m out of the apartment a lot but I’m not really out (as in parties).
Mondays and Wednesdays, I tutor ESL from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, rowing practice from 6:30pm til around 9pm. (somedays, we also go grab a bite to eat or a beer)
Fridays, coaching high school kids from 5 pm til 7:30 pm and usually go to dinner with the other coaches after.
Saturdays, I’m rowing and coaching from 7 am to around 2:30pm. Then it’s time for a manicure and I’m usually committed to some sort of party for the evening, so I’m only at home maybe a few hours for a nap or a shower.
Sundays, practice is from 11 to 1pm-ish and we always do a really long lunch.
So I’m out with friends a lot but I’m not really partying. Hmmmm, looking at this schedule, I now see why I never find time to actually clean the bathroom…
Does it count if you have people over all the time? We have three friends who come over at least one day every week, and frequent houseguests.
I go out dancing maybe once a month, and to dance class once or twice a week. My husband and I occasionally go out with friends, too. Mostly, our social life is lived at home through other people coming to us.
As I mentioned, there’s no we. I have 1 friend who lives in the metro area, and she works or is doing other stuff, so I see her maybe once every month or so.
Stuff happens at college. The problem is, I don’t live on/near campus(I commute) and a lot of the things that happen don’t interest me enough to go by myself. If a friend invited me to a luau, I guess I’d go, but since I have little interest in ploynesian culture, there’s no point for me to go by myself.
Me and my SO spend a lot of time together out of work. So we play Frisbee every evening, almost, and go see movies together, or bowling, or hiking, or whatever. But no, I wouldn’t call that a “social life” neither do I really want one. I’m quite content spending all this time with him…we share so many similar interests.
Keep in mind asking this question on a message board gets you a lot more homebodies than I think are in the general pop.
My big “go out” times were when I was in grad school, from '94 to 2000. Went out every Fri & Sat. Usually at least once during the week, and usually would go out to play poker.
I was actively trying to meet girls that whole time, but I was also someone who just thought “going out drinking” was something to do. Go bar to bar. Watch a game. Get some food. Shoot the shit. Shoot some pool. Whatever. Drinking the whole time.
After meeting my eventual wife, that all started to slow down. For one, she doesn’t like bars – mainly because of the smoke.
Now, we go out to eat and/or go to the movies once a week, the occasional art opening, the occasional party for someone we know, the occasional “event”. I don’t think its a loser thing at all to stay in, though. I just don’t have as much fun going out drinking as I used to. We like to rent movies, cook for ourselves, and watch the dogs wrestle.
Still, when the wife is out of town, I like to go to a bar and get some food and a few beers. I’ll watch a half a basketball game or a few innings of a baseball game.
I have a couple buddies, and we’ll sometimes get together to watch a NASCAR race at a house or a bar. Swill some brews, eat some beef.
I’ve never had a social life. I’m very introverted and going out can sometimes feel like more trouble than it’s worth. I do have three friends whom I do things with whenever we can (three of us are in college, so only around in the summer, and the other is in a drum corps and is away all summer), but that’s it. I just finished my first year of college and it was finals week before I went to a friend’s room to hang out at all, and really I was just there to trade music with her. I’m just a lot more comfortable when I’m alone and don’t have to be social.
When I was in my 20s and early 30s, I made Carrie Bradshaw look like the Unibomber. This was back in the '80s, when there was a new club opening every weekend: Palladium, Limelight, Roxy, The Saint, Heartbreak, Surf Club . . . I was out dining & dancing, going to art openings on the Lower East Side, awful shows my friends were in, Park Avenue penthouse parties . . .
Now that I’m an old lady, I prefer small, intime lunches with friends, then going home after work and collapsing into bed with a cat and a good book. Lights out by 10:00.
I’d love to be a hermit. But people seem to like my company. I do not like going out to bars much…mostly because the drinks are too damned expensive and I usually end up getting stiffed on the bill.
I like just hanging out with my hubby and dogs…taking walks, drives, movies, etc. A fancy dinner once in a while is great.
If I said Yes to everything that was offered, I’d be doing something every day of the week. That’d about put me in the nuthouse.
Lately, I don’t want to do anything. I have to have a LEEP procedure done (scary girl thing) and have recently quit smoking which makes me scary cranky and I cheat when other people are smoking. So I’m tense and cranky. Who’d want to hang out with that? They keep calling though…
Well, no. I tried it. I went to clubs, they stunk, were dark, and had terrible music. I’ve never been to a bar and I don’t really see the appeal.
It’s not that I don’t like going out, but there’s just not that much to do. Go see a movie? I can do that at home for half the price. The most I ever get out is band practice. With the old friends, I’d usually end up at someone’s house and get bored when they decided to play video games or something. With the new friends, I rarely see them outside of school.
As a result I’ve become addited to the internet. WHEE!
