#76 Make New Friends

Friends are interesting. For the most part I consider myself friendly and easy to get along with as long as whomever I am interacting isn’t a bad human. I have no problem starting conversations with people and though I consider myself an introvert when I’m around strangers, more often then not I am the one initiating conversation because I just like talking.

It’s the step of taking friendly interactions to actually committing to doing something and actually creating a friendship which is what makes it hard. I find I have no issues talking which puts me half way there, but it’s finding people who want to make the same effort to hang out and go do things the hard part.

Obviously, since I am writing this posts I feel in some way that I have accomplished this goal and it’s not necessarily cause I just went out and started hanging out with a bunch of people and decided we were friends. It has been months and years of me developing and restoring connections with people.

I made an effort to get in contact with people that I had met back in 2015 and just never saw each other again. We started talking monthly and updating each other on life, going out for lunch, brain storming future business ideas.

I befriended customers at my families restaurant, which normally I stray away from. But I met some wonderful people and I got a sassy hair stylist friend out of it.

I went out of my way to talk to people at the dance studio I go to workout at and it wasn’t even that hard. The people I know there are some of the happiest and inspiring people and they are so fun to be around. I don’t get to see them as often, but I try my hardest to reach out to people that make me smile and love myself that much.

And lastly I have the friends that have been with me through everything, my constants. It’s friendships that I have had for years that I continually nurture. Because it’s those friendship that I want to still surround myself with and though I had started a goal to make new friends it has made me think back on my current friendships and how important they are to me.

When I wrote this goal I think I thought that I needed to get a more solid group of friends, but I was looking at it too seriously. I just needed to focus on surrounding myself with good and happy people. Friends don’t have to be a serious thing and you also don’t have to constantly making plans. That’s something I have to remind myself. Life isn’t that serious, just gotta slow down and enjoy the days.

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#91 Have a Car Chase

It has been brought to my attention that I have in fact done this and completely forgot!

Before I begin my narrative let me introduce you to my friend Emily. Emily is hilarious, beautiful, joyful, so randomly brilliant, and so unbelievably crazy that she is one of my favorite humans to be around. She forced her way into my life and I love her for it.

Back in high school and probably even now Emily’s type of man was a Bearded Gentleman with a Big Truck.

Long ago when Emily and I were in the same state and I did not have a driver’s license and for reasons I can’t really remember we had my mom’s Scion XB. Which is basically just a car that looks like a box and doesn’t have any necessary need for speed that would be desired/ideal for a car chase. So of course that was the car that we had on this day.

Now if I’m being honest I have absolutely no idea what we were doing that day, but I can tell you exactly where we were on the highway when Emily spotted a good looking truck that passed us and she swore the guy driving it was just her type. So of course she speeds up to try to pass him and get a proper look at him. Now the Scion isn’t good with speed, she’s getting the Scion up there, but this guy is hauling. Full on does not care what the speed limit is and our tiny box car is not even on his radar. Of course Emily doesn’t care about that and guns the Scion and pursues the heck out of this truck.

Does this story verge on stalker territory? A little, but the reason it doesn’t is cause remember that I said we were in a Scion, well we were also going up a highway that is 65mph that heads into elevation. Now this isn’t a problem if you have a car that has power and has no problem with elevation increase. Ah but the lil Scion does not have that power. Going up a hill it drops 20mph and you sitting at a comfy 45mph til you can make it to where the speed limit is actually 45mph.

So did we even get close to this guy? No. Not at all. Did we make an effort? Yes. Did we have the worst possible car for a car chase? Absolutely. Should we still have tried? Yes, that could have been Emily’s future husband and we had to give it a shot; even though it was a fail.

So there ya have it y’all I was actually involved in a car chase back in the day. Maybe not super dramatic, but not everything in life has to be dramatic. Plus a casual car chase just happening sounds like the ideal for a circumstance goal.

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#98 See a shop that is doing some type of class and go sign up for one

While out to brunch last week Sammi, Ashley, and I passed a candle shop with a sign in the window that said candle making class.

We decided to go in and found out that it had a variety of scents and was absolutely adorable. Instantly we knew we had to make candles there, but that day we didn’t have enough time. So, us being so well planned signed up for a class for the next week and got it set up.

Fast forward to today and not only have I accomplished a goal on the list, but I got myself an awesome candle!

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All of our candles fit our personalities surprisingly perfect and it’s because this place offered so much variety and the girl who works (potentially owns?) there just knew the perfect blend for any combination of scents. Ashley mentioned how therapeutic it was just being there working with scents and I completely agree. It was such a relaxing, but really fun experience and it just made so much sense.

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Social

I am pretty introverted as a person, so I wanted to have a set list of challenges that kind of forced me out and expand myself socially. But also allow myself to have fun doing them and not make socializing feel like a chore. I want to get out there, but I don’t want to do too much and lock myself up. This list is set up to put me out there, but allows me to stay true to my personality.

Social Goals:

Go Dancing at least twice a month for a year
- I actually love going swing dancing or line dancing or literally any dancing people invite me too and I go a lot and then I just stop. Not sure why, I clearly enjoy it, but I just start avoiding it. It’s something that I wanna enjoy and it’s an activity that is fun and gets me socialized.
Monthly Board Game Night
- I would like to keep this up for the rest of my life so I’mma need a consistent group! But for challenge purposes I will say this will be accomplished after a year of consistency.
Go out every night for one week
- This has to be when I’m home, when I’m traveling or on vacation this is easy, but when I’m home going out every night is a struggle. I don’t think I’ve ever successfully gone out every day of the week before, so gotta get on that.
Throwback outings
- I didn’t really know how to phrase this, but once a month I should get someone to go out and do something that we would have done when we were kids. Like as a kid I went bowling and did laser tag a lot, but in recent years haven’t gone since I turned eighteen, so that would be a throwback outing.
Live music
- I’ve gone to quite a few concerts, so I don’t really know what I mean by this, but it’s social and it’s something that I should do more of for more life experiences. So maybe see ten live shows in a given amount of time to make it more of a challenge. I have figured out what I’m doing for this challenge! For this to be accomplished I have to go see bands at 10 different concert venues. I realized I have been to quite a few concerts but only at 1 or 2 venues and so I have moved the focus of this goal to going to more concert venues.
Make New friends
- I know this is super generalized and I love all my current friends and I do have friends so thankfully I’m not a total loner, but I do realize that I have my own little circle. That’s fine, but I’d like to meet more people and the more friends the more social experiences I will get.
Say Yes
- Take the Yes Man mentality for a day or a week
Go to Vegas with a Group
- This used to be a conversation social challenge, but then I spent a weekend in Vegas with friends and with the level of socialization I did it felt like that had to be swapped out for Vegas. Plus I really want to cross off some more goals so this one is going to be a give me.
Dating
- I don’t go out on dates often and it’s definitely because of some insecurities and me being picky, but I do know it is something I should start doing a bit more often. Dating doesn’t have to be just to find a special someone (though that’s kind of the purpose), they provide some great social times and even if it is initially a date, but becomes a friend thing that’s even better cause I am always down for some friends! Plus it will leave me some (potentially great) stories.
Join a Club
- Maybe I’ll find a new hobby or expand on my current ones!