Okay, a little backstory - I’m a 24 year old guy, just moved into the Chicago suburbs last July. At the moment, I live alone but in about 3 weeks, a friend of mine will be moving in with me.
Anyway, what the hell do people do on weekends? I work full-time during the week, desk job, the usual stuff. But come Friday or Saturday night and here I am, all by myself in my apartment, watching tv or a movie or something. I’m not Mr. Popularity, but I do have friends and it always seems like I can never get a hold of them to make plans, or they’re already busy or something. I don’t have a whole lot of friends mainly because I moved away from all my old friends in my hometown, then moved away from all my college friends (the daily 80 mile round-trip commute was killing me), and just haven’t made a great many friends here.
I usually just don’t know what to do with myself on the weekends anymore. I don’t drink, so going to a bar by myself is usually pretty pointless, not to mention the fact that I’m not really the type to go out to bar and just hang out with random people. Hell, maybe that’s my problem. And, for the record, I don’t think that I’m a particularly dull person - in fact, I’m pretty cool to hang out with most of the time.
Sleep late
coffee
long walk with dogs
laundry, yard, catch up on email, house chores
read, errands, movie
listen to a baseball game on radio and hopefully watch the same game on tv but on mute
work out / bike
wash truck
if i were in chicago i would definetly see the cubs
Catch up on errands.
Catch up on my e-mail.
Clean the house.
Go grocery shopping.
Rent movies.
Eat lots of popcorn.
Read books & magazines.
Do the crossword puzzles.
Laundry.
Phone friends & relatives.
Play cards.
Take the kids somewhere fun.
Catch a movie in the theatre (and even though I have a husband, I would definitely go to the movies by myself, and have in the past).
Head to the pub and play trivia games.
Play pool.
Go to a pool.
Weed the flowerbed.
Paint furniture/do repair work.
Browse the flea markets.
Browse the second hand book stores.
Surf the net.
Write in my livejournal.
etc.
Obviously, there’s too much me and not enough weekend.
cleaning the house, laundry, picking up after three teenagers, hanging out with the vet while he examines the puppies, feeding five puppies, dashing out to see Spider-man, dashing out to get materials for end of school projects, dashing out to get milk for morning cereal, shit forgot to thraw out chicken so I drag three kids to the chinese buffet, note to self to get sprinkler system fixed/hunt for the watering thingie to water lawn while waiting for sprinkler fix-it man shows up… that’s what I did today. Tomorrow? probably pretty much the same.
Uh oh … I get groceries every week and have yet to pick up one woman. I once helped an old lady get something off of a high shelf, but I failed to get her number.
Well, since there are few singles in their 40’s, and married couples are always loathe to include their single friends in their plans, I usually do most of the above. I have lots of “friends”, although I would have to call them acquaintances since we rarely socialize as they are all couples.
I do have one single female friend, whom I’ll call Liz, but I have found it nearly impossible to socialize with her. See, she has developed a crush on a mutual friend of ours, whom I’ll call Jean. The only thing is, Jean is married and is not gay. Actually, I don’t think Liz is gay, either, but she definitely has a crush on Jean. Of course, since Jean is married and quite naive, she has no idea Liz has a crush on her. But anyway, the long and short of it is I realized I enjoyed being alone more than I enjoyed being with Liz and listening to her cry and moan becuase she’d rather be out with Jean. Especially since Liz is also bi-polar and the weekends she doesn’t get to spend with Jean she spends in a deep, dark depression that I can do nothing about, even though she keeps crying and moaning to me about it.
Liz and I work for the same company but seldom see each other at work. The times we do, though (sometimes at lunch, or occasionally we carpool) she’s a blast, a real joy to be with.
But those weekend get-togethers have become a royal pain.
Last night, I went to see a friend’s band play at a local bar - I pretty much managed to avoid the drunks by staying close to the stage & thrashing about a lot
Along those lines, maybe check out your local live music scene.
Mountain bike. Buy (or rent) a bike, find the local trails, and never be bored on the weekends again. That’ll cover the day; for the night, having been in your position, I recommend finding yourself a nice gal for regular Saturday night stuff. As you get older, it gets harder to count on the buddies to entertain you after hours.
