Remembering To Have Some Fun (or Hangouts Don’t Always Have To Be Events)

For a while I’ve been working on making more of an effort to see my friends. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in work, or I get sick, or life just takes over and I neglect some of my friendships. I know that I’m not the only person guilty of doing this, but I also know that I can be better about making plans and not letting too much time go by between hanging out with friends.

But at the same time, I feel like I see some of my friends a lot because of things that I have scheduled to do with them. When I have parties to go to, musicals that I have tickets for, or Disney days in the calendar those are events and I make the time to go to them. Those events are usually in my calendar for a while so I don’t really feel like I’ve been making plans. I just am going to something I knew about and they are really fun things I get to do.

But not all of my friend hangouts need to be events like that and big awesome days. I have forgotten about just going to hang out with my friends or doing something easy and casual with them. This may be because I do try to save time for dates and am trying to keep myself available and open, but that is no excuse. My friends should always be a priority to me whether or not I’m dating someone.

So after the last musical I went to, my friends and I were saying that we needed to do a fun dinner or something soon. Normally our dinners out are before the show or at Disneyland and they are a part of a bigger day. It’s so easy to forget that we can just go out and have a dinner and maybe go see a movie or something. I always think that hangouts have to be something amazing and awesome and forget that what makes them amazing and awesome is usually the company that I’m with. So this week we decided to do a dinner and movie hangout.

We had a bit of a snafu with our original dinner idea. We picked a restaurant that normally would be easy to park at with street and neighborhood parking. But the neighborhood parking ended at 6pm and the street parking was a rush-hour tow zone until 7pm. And of course we were trying to eat at 6. So we made a quick decision to switch restaurants and picked one in the same shopping center as the movie we were going to. This worked out fine and I really love the food at the restaurant we went to. I was planning on having a cheeseburger at the original restaurant and got one at the one we ate at.

Dinner was a little rushed so we could make it to the movie, but we still had time to catch up on life. I’ve been struggling with some things lately (more on that later this week) and I really did need to talk some things out. It’s so nice to have friends who relate to what I’m going through and have advice to give. And they aren’t afraid to ask the hard questions or bring up things that I might not want to hear but need to. And I try to do the same for them when they are struggling.

After dinner we went to the movie which was something we were all looking forward to seeing. I’m not going to share what movie it was because I didn’t really love it, but it was fun to go to a movie with friends. I’m so used to going to screenings alone that it is a rare treat to go to a movie with someone else. And it’s pretty rare for me to see a movie that is in a regular theater and it is a different feeling compared to a screening venue. I think that because I go to so many screenings I forget about going to movies with friends. My friends both have MoviePass which I have debated getting. I’m still not totally sold on getting it because I don’t know if I’d use it enough, but it’s something I know I could get one day if I do end up going to more movies that aren’t screenings.

Seeing a movie with friends was so fun. We were chatting about what we liked and didn’t like after it was done and we all had pretty different opinions. One friend loved it, one friend didn’t, and I was mixed (as I put it to my friends, “I have thoughts about it.”). But it didn’t matter that I didn’t love the movie, it was nice just talking to them about it after the movie was done. When I go alone, I don’t get that experience.

I’ve said this a million times (and will probably say it a million more), but I am working on being better at seeing my friends. But this dinner and a movie out was a good reminder that I can do things that don’t take much planning or effort to see my friends and still have a great time.

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Such An LA Night (or Just Having Some Fun With A Friend) More Friends More Fun (or Still Building My Social Circle) Remembering To See My Friends (or Actually Scheduling Hangouts) Just A Fun Dinner Out (or Remembering To Have Fun) Remembering To Have Fun (or Celebrating With Smores) Finding A Social Life Where I Can (or Virtual Parties and Distance Hangouts)