#72 Monthly Board Game Night

This is a goal that I am most shocked that I’ve completed. It’s really hard to keep game nights going. Usually it’s one person starts bailing and soon the rest follow. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen and hopefully I didn’t jinx something.

I had tried in the past to get game nights going, but it was always empty promises and then never actually getting to it. It wasn’t until last year that I found out the way to do game nights and to keep them going.

The secret is to stop playing only physical board games and dive into the world of role playing games. Since I’ve started doing weekly D&D sessions I’ve had a consistent game night. Yeah it’s not a full on board game, but it has game mechanics and at this point I’m grateful to be hanging out with friends playing any game.

I’ve also learned a game that you can play via online or in person is a great thing. Sometimes people just can’t meet up at a house, or people move, or you don’t feel like company. Adapting games over discord has been the best and honestly if it hadn’t been pandemic era I never would have thought of playing games over video calls. It was always in my brain that I had to have people over and set up a date and make a big deal out of game nights.

It’s much easier now. Sometimes it’s in person gaming, sometimes it’s over discord. It’s easy and it’s fun. I’m grateful to have a group to play games with because for the longest time it was just me and my brother playing complex tabletop games that took 5 hours to set up. Granted I’ll still do that whenever I hang out with my brother, but the RPG set up I’ve got going on right now is really nice.

#78 Go to Vegas with a Group

This was not on the original list. Stuff happens and lists change. No big deal.

But actually after spending a weekend in Vegas with a group of people and some friends I haven’t seen in a while, it felt like I deserved to cross off a goal. So hence this goal was created!

Now I just spent 4 days in Vegas and as far as my social comfort zone is concerned I stomped over it and properly socialized. Went to brunches, fancy dinners, crazy dinners, hung out by the pool, went to Blue Man Group, saw Penn &Teller, got to drive sports cars, and lots of walking around the strip. That’s a lot for my workaholic introverted self. I crammed just enough of Vegas for me to probably not want to do Vegas for a decade or 2.

No offense, but Vegas is not for me. I had a lot of fun and it was great to see my friends, but when it comes down to it I was definitely socially overloaded. Grateful I did it and I was proud of my dorky self for going and enjoying myself.

#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.