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[5/6] – Doing Something About It
Current mood:  giddy
Category: Life
[This is part five in a series - ya better go back and get caught up, slacker!]
In
Refrigerator Rights, Dr. Will Miller paints what seems like a desperate
dire picture of human relationships in developed societies. But
he also points out that the fix is just as simple as can be.
Simply spend time with the people you love!
I used to say to gym
clients that losing weight was simple – but that doesn't mean it's
easy. There's no mystery to 'do more, eat less'. It takes
consistent discipline, which isn't about beating up on your self.
It's deciding to make the right decision every hour of every day for a
long time. Ultimately, it means changing your habits.
That's just what we're talking about here!
Some of you have
close family, even a small family of your own [or not so small ;-)
]. That probably means a good number of gatherings during the
year, holidays and birthdays and such. Sometimes these will seem
like a pain, and often one or more family member will seem bothersome,
but hey – it's family. You deal with everything from spilt milk
to crazy uncles, together.
What about your friends and your
peers? Do you interact with them in any similar
circumstance? I bet that on a typical weeknight you are doing the
exact same things as your friends in similar situations. When
you're wrangling kids after school, trying to get a reasonable dinner
out of the oven, hoping to get a teeny bit of quiet TV time in before
bed – most everybody else you know is doing the same thing! I
submit that in that quiet hour at the end you would feel tremendously
more contented if some part of that evening had been shared by good
friends.
So do it! Have a rotating dinner night.
Take turns hosting a simple sit-down dinner with a few friends, with or
without the kids. Make the time regular, and mix up the
activities (even nothing is a perfectly ok thing to do).
There's no limit to the to-do ideas:
- Rotating dinner night
- Game night (family-friendly or otherwise)
- Yard work parties (Seriously! Trade off on these for a few weeks)
- Video game party
- Theme parties [e.g. murder-mystery-in-a-box kits]
- Afternoon in the park
- Roast of a random person (who thinks it's someone else until her or she arrives)
- Group pet walk (or grooming day, whatever)
- Key Party [Ok, just kidding about that one. (Mostly.)]
You're more clever than me, what are your cheap and easy ideas?
To
cut short the ready excuses, note that any of these involve hosting
only once a month or so, if a few people take turns. You do clean
house more than once a month already, right? And most of these
involve splitting work, like making food dishes. Getting together
for a meal should be simpler than doing it separately, not more complicated.
There
are two things I'm pushing here in particular. There should not
be a permanent divide between home life and time with friends, so some
times there are activities where kids can come along. There also
should be some variety in the grown-up events. Falling in to the
same old bar is ok, but there has to be some variety for really rich
deep relationships to hold up.
There's probably one or two
nights a week you have nothing scheduled, and you wind up bored [just
watch the myspace surveys pile up some evenings...]. Let other
people know about it – they probably have the exact same problem!
(Did you really think we'd get all the way through this with without a LOLcat?)
---
Greenvillians
– we already have one person who's stood up and answered the
call! Valarie is hosting a game and pot-luck night on Friday
November 21st in Simpsonville. You *are* interested and you could not *possibly* have better plans. She doesn't bite (unless you ask real nice, or you deserve it), and the dog only bites a little.
---
Coming soon - My Personal Pledge!
Same bat-time, same bat-station. Stay tuned!!
{on to part 6}
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Currently
listening
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Family Style
By Vaughan Brothers
Release date: By 1990-09-07 |
7:02 AM
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