Crafternoon anyone?

I’m in a mentoring program at work that is pretty great. I’m an extrovert and an external processor, so having regular meet ups with someone to talk about life and goals and challenges is remarkably fulfilling. One exercise was called the “Wheel of life” and you evaluate the different areas of your life (work, relationships, finances, health etc) and think about where you would like them to be. Do you know what I rated the lowest? Social life. I gave it a 2 out of 10. Pretty crappy, but that’s what I was feeling.

I have amazing friends and I especially love being in Australia so I’m close to friends that I was away from for years. But between working full time, crappy health and being pretty darn pooped every evening and weekend, my social life isn’t great. It was weird thinking about it and trying to put a number to it because it certainly wasn’t a conscious choice I made. Instead, it is the result of just letting life happen. When you have babies it gets so much harder to go out, so you get out if the habit. Then adding in work and having some health set backs means that a lot of time you’re kind of in survival mode. Social life is one of those things that is never an essential requirement, so it gets deprioritized. Before you realize it, you have friends you consider close, but you see them about once a year.

It’s one of those frog in a pot of water scenarios. Life gradually cranks up the heat, but you don’t notice. Eventually, you’re fully cooked. My social life is fully cooked and needs some TLC. So I’m hoping to make some changes. One is to make more effort just to reach out to people. Email, text, phone, whatever. The main thing is engaging and this doesn’t depend on living close or big schedule changes. It’s more of a habit change. If I swap 5 minutes of fb time for emailing a friend, it’ll be a big improvement from what I’m doing currently.

Another thing I love is getting together with people, but I hate the hassle of finding a time that works and sorting out all of the logistics. So I’m thinking of instigating something like a monthly crafternoon. Maybe on the second Saturday if every month. If something happens regularly, you don’t have to stress about making it work for everyone because you’ll get another chance. And if I is always the same, it removes the mental load of planning for all kinds of variables. I love crocheting, but I love it even more when I’ve got friends to share it with.

Still a kind of half-baked idea, but I’m putting it out there because I think it could be great and also to make it a bit more real. Now, if only I could figure out a way to get all of my friends all over the world together in one place, I’d be set.

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