Tag Archives: Activities

Open yourself up and get out there

You’ve got to be open to trying new things, lots of new things. You start getting complacent in life, doing the same old stuff every day, pretty soon everything’s boring, you’re sitting at your computer for four hour stretches at a time, the days are blending into the nights and you can’t remember off the top of your head what day of the week it is, what time you have to start getting ready for work, you’re getting all of these text messages from your boss like, “Are you coming in? You’re supposed to be here right now. Where are you?”

getout

And so yes, text him back, tell him that you got mugged on the way to work or something like that, like they stole your wallet, luckily not your cell phone, because … OK, yeah, don’t text, just show up at work, maybe look a little purposefully disheveled, and tell him that the mugger stole your cell phone too.

No, you really can’t use a trick like this more than once a year. And so while you’re in the bathroom splashing some cold water on your face, staring at a reflection in the mirror that’s looking less familiar every day, telling yourself, all right man, just really, really make an effort to show up to work on time, just really make it a point not to be late again, also, at the same time, think about getting involved in some new activities. You’ve got to get out there and try some new things.

Lots of things. Like, I don’t know. Why don’t you take a cooking class? That could be fun, right? You can learn all sorts of different ways to prepare food. And then when you wake up in the morning, you can start thinking about going to the store, and buying all of those fresh ingredients. Do you remember what that okra looked like? Will they have okra at the regular grocery store? Actually, you probably should have gotten up a little earlier. You can’t expect to go to the grocery store, cook a whole meal, and still be on time for work. Just go to Subway, just grab a sandwich, just remember you’ve really got to be in on time today.

But don’t stop thinking about all of those new activities you’re going to get involved in. Life is what you make of it, right? Right. What about hockey? You used to play hockey in high school, right? Well, there you go, get involved. Or don’t get involved, I didn’t realize how expensive ice time was. And yeah, I didn’t really think about the cost of buying all new equipment. You sure you won’t be able to find any of your old stuff at home? No, I guess I don’t have a lot of my old high school stuff either.

What about tennis though? That can’t be as expensive as hockey. Just go on craigslist and find an old racket, nothing too old, but come, you’ve got to be able to find something decent online. Do you know how many people are constantly taking up new activities? I guarantee you that there’s got to be at least ten people within a five block radius that have made a commitment to get involved in a new activity, probably tennis. They buy brand new rackets, they sign up for a free intro lesson at the tennis center, and then it’s like ten months later and that racket hasn’t been taken out the case at all, it’s practically brand new still, just waiting to be plucked for a totally lowball offer on craigslist.

Look, I’m not saying it has to be tennis. It could be anything. Carpentry. Guitar lessons. Running. Gardening. Is anything sounding cool here? Anything jumping out at you? Painting. Bird watching. I don’t know man, you just keep shaking your head no, it’s like, what do you want to do? Huh? Because for me anyway, it’s like, I won’t really get into something until I at least give it a shot. And so what if you don’t like it after a while? Try something else.

You want to play video games all day? Well, I mean I guess that’s something. You could play online, right? You could talk with some of the other gamers. That’s an activity. Yeah. Making popcorn, sure, that’s something else. Think about people living three, four hundred years ago. I doubt they made popcorn. And if they did, they definitely weren’t making it in a bag in the microwave. No man, just count your blessings, don’t forget to look on the bright side. Is this helping? Are you feeling a little better? Just, after you’re done with that next level, let’s go for a walk, OK? Or tomorrow, sure, just, you let me know when you’re ready to get out there, OK? The world is your oyster, OK! Well, I was just speaking figuratively, there aren’t any oysters, not really. But if you’ve never had an oyster, you should definitely at least try it. Yeah it’s got a really weird texture, but I’m telling you, you get used to that briny taste, you start to really like it man, or you can just add some lemon juice and Tabasco until it doesn’t seem so weird just slurping it out of the shell like that.

Searching for some new activities

I need to get involved in some new activities. My life’s getting a little stale. I’m just doing the same things over and over again. I tried getting into fishing, but I found it incredibly boring. I knew it would be boring before I started, but for some reason I thought I could make it interesting. I went down to the docks and set up my line. Then I waited like an hour. Then I waited another hour. Nothing. I got so sunburned. Boredom levels reached an all time high.

After the second hour, this old man fishing next to me asked me if I would watch his lines while he went to go to the bathroom. He hadn’t caught anything either, and he had set up like eight poles. If I were I a fish, and I saw eight evenly spaced out worms, that would, to me, be a dead giveaway that somebody’s fishing. The old man was taking forever and, like I said, I was really bored, so while he was gone, I tied the hook of my line to the hook of one of his lines. When he came back, I started reeling it in like I had caught something, which made it look like his line had caught something also. We both tugged on our lines for about a minute or so, but I couldn’t help myself and I started laughing pretty hard. As soon as I started laughing, my grip on the pole slackened, and so did the old man’s. So he figured out what was going on pretty fast and started yelling at me in some language that sounded like Polish or something Eastern European, which made me laugh even more. Then he took out a knife and started at me all crazy like, so I ran away.

I was too scared to go back and get my pole so I went to the park and thought about starting a new activity: sitting around and feeding the ducks. I always thought feeding the ducks was such a peaceful sport. I imagined tearing off pieces of bread and giving them to the ducks, eventually teaching them how to do tricks, or at least showing them how to march behind me single file. But this activity turned sour immediately. As soon as I sat down at the bench, this one duck flew out of nowhere and landed like a few feet away from me. He started honking really loudly and waddling over to me. I stood up hoping to scare him off, but he just kept advancing and honking, or quacking I guess. I gave up and ran away.

I had never met such a mean bird. Actually, that’s not true. One time when I was in Ecuador, we went to this lady’s house in the mountains. When we got there, the guy who drove us told me to be careful, because this lady had some really mean turkeys. Mean turkeys? I thought either that this guy was crazy or that I had simply mistranslated what he had said to me because, there weren’t any turkeys, just chickens running around. But maybe two hours later, the driver was talking and all of the sudden just stopped, mid-sentence his mouth hanging open. I tried to ask him what was wrong, but he could only point. And sure enough, maybe ten feet away there was a group of turkeys, and they started slowly walking toward us, making weird, terrifying gobbling sounds. The driver immediately ran to the car and, not knowing what these poultry were capable of, I followed him. We drove off and no matter how much I asked the driver why he was so scared of the turkeys – what kind of threat did they pose? – he just couldn’t choke out an answer.

So finally I just gave up on new activities and bought an old Nintendo DS and a copy of Nintendogs. I named my virtual pet Scruffy, and things were getting along OK at first, but, and I really can’t believe that somebody programmed this into the game, I let Scruffy out for an unsupervised walk, I’m telling you it was a legit option, and then I forgot about the game for a few days. When I picked it up, the Game Boy alerted me that Scruffy was foaming at the mouth and was threatening my neighbor’s kids. The only option available was to put the dog down. Can you imagine? What a sick, twisted video game.