I'm Only Here for the WiFi (8 page)

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 An automatic sense of unity and friendship is forged within the group, which greatly facilitates after-game recreation—a
useful quality, as the transition from meet-up group to genuinely fun happy hour is not always a smooth one.

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 You may actually burn a calorie or two while you're having a good time.

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 You run a high risk of getting sweaty, which is not the most conducive quality when you want to flirt with your fellow athletes.

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 Adult recreational sports always involve a vague silliness—all of us run a little like wonks, move somewhat slowly, and generally don't look at the top of our game. It can be unsettling to those of us especially prone to embarrassment over our appearance.

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 The uniforms might be highly unflattering.

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 There is almost guaranteed to be a Team Asshole whose sole purpose is showing everyone else how athletic and talented he is, which begs the question, “Why are you playing adult recreational sports when you could clearly be out at the Olympics with your more qualified peers?”

The different kinds of hobbies we can take up as adults are almost limitless (even if they usually fall into a few general categories). No matter what your goals are, or where you live, with the advent of the Internet, you can do almost anything with your spare time if you are looking for something besides binge drinking.
If you want to pop balloons for sexual release, there is a group for you—and you may get your very own voyeuristic special on TLC. If you enjoy dressing up as anthropomorphic cartoon animals and running around convention halls taking pictures of each other, you likely have a meet-up in your area this week. If you like going out into wooded areas and taking pictures of wildlife to note in some adorable little journal like you're ten years old, you have endless options out there.

But whatever you choose to dedicate your time to, you have to find something. Because we have all likely met that guy who has so thoroughly clung to the collegiate lifestyle, basing all life's significant moments and unallocated time to drinking or, in a more general sense, “partying.” While there is definitely a certain charm in being the most efficient binge drinker in the tristate area when you're nineteen, that title gains a tinge of sadness when you're well into your twenties.

Obvious health implications for your poor, innocent liver aside, there are distinct limitations in a lifestyle that is wholly centered around being perpetually inebriated. You'll only meet certain kinds of people, go certain places, and you'll have to face the inevitable fear of socializing while completely sober and 100 percent yourself. For some, the idea of integrating a new daily/weekly activity that may cost money, doesn't come with free drinks, and is based on learning a skill seems foreign at best, terrifying at worst. It's just not something we're used to.

Taking up a new activity for the first time can be terrifying; it requires stepping out of the comfort zone of “hanging out” that we never even considered before. It's disarming at first, how much joining a group makes us all feel like children again—afraid to embarrass ourselves and constantly on the verge of nervous tears.

I remember the first time I went to a real swing dance class (a hobby that would end up becoming a big part of my life), I was fucking terrified. First of all, I've always been a pretty uncoordinated human being. It's not that I'm not graceful, as much as I'm essentially a human version of those crazy inflatable dancing car dealership guys. I just kind of flop and wiggle around like an overcooked noodle, knocking things over and spilling things on myself. And, true to form, I was terrible at first. I couldn't remember the steps, I had a hard time letting other people lead me, and I had hilariously poor form. It was just a mess, and for hours at a time, I would feel the creeping, burning feeling on the back of my neck of a bunch of randos watching me humiliating myself for their enjoyment.

Even worse, the entire group seemed like high school 2.0, in that everyone was already paired off, cliqued up, and designated into “cool” versus “not cool.” The people who were really good dancers were in their own little world, completely unaffected by the plebians over in our corner trying to learn not to step on their own feet every time they turned. It seemed like an impenetrable world of talent and friendship and preestablished groups. But as with most things, as we get more familiar with an environment, it tends
to lose some of its initial, terrifying luster. It became more understandable, I started to really dance, and the once-intimidating groups suddenly revealed themselves as standard-issue Dance Nerds who were just really cool in their one environment. Outside of that—at a party, for example—they were as awkward and strange as everyone else. And considering how much partying serves to unify even the most diverse groups of friends and hobbyists, it was hilarious to see them so completely out of their element.

We come to rely on the act of partying as a social lubricant that allows us to do—and attempt to have sex with—whatever we want. And there's nothing wrong with partying; it's awesome. But let's not act as though the actual definition of a
party
itself doesn't drastically change the further away from higher education we get. There are only so many times you can initiate a round of beer pong on a Tuesday night before all your nine-to-five friends start looking at you as “that guy.” This isn't to say that we should all resign ourselves to the slippery descent into going home at 10:00 p.m. on a Friday night and shooting judgmental looks at our friends who want to enjoy a tiny slice of nightlife before they wither and die, but it's all about balance.

And nothing helps strike that balance better than finding something constructive to do with your spare time. Speaking from personal experience, you may encounter friends or coworkers who regard your decision to join a dance group or go to language meet-ups or book clubs with more than a slight raise of the eyebrow.
“What's this?” they seem to gasp with flustered incredulity, monocle popping out and landing neatly in their champagne glass full of Coors Light. “You mean you actually have little activities you go to? How cute!” The truth is that as young adults we are just not acquainted with the concept of voluntarily signing up for shit that isn't going directly on a college application or resume. What do you stand to gain, except possibly a noticeable dip in your checking account from monthly fees?

In all honesty, you stand to gain a lot.

We put huge premiums, when dating or seeking new friends, on people who are “cultured.” When setting up an OKCupid account, we know that we don't want some toothless yokel who dislikes gay people on principle and has never left his hometown. But why don't we want these things? If we're being honest, we probably want someone who is able to expand our horizons and possibly teach us—I know, teach?! Us?!? But we're the smartest people in the world!—something new. We want someone who is full of diverse interests and has filled his spare time with activities both enriching and challenging. Who wants to be with someone who is totally complacent in an unironic Dale from
King of the Hill
kind of way?

And yet, we often don't demand this of ourselves. We picture our ideal best friend or significant other, and imagine someone who is able to integrate seamlessly into every gathering, from a pretentious book release party filled with faux intellectuals and
professors tenured enough to openly hit on their more attractive pupils, to a round of foosball in a dive bar in which every surface is inexplicably sticky. But are we able to do those things? Most likely the answer is no, even if we would describe ourselves on dating sites or on a first date as “pretty cultured.” No one wants to admit that a vast majority of her free time is spent giggling at the neckbeards on the MRA sections of Reddit and chilling out with their cats—it's just not sexy.

In order to break the cycle of no one actually doing anything interesting but everyone wanting someone with a little panache, we have to take the first step. And even if your motivation for signing up for that new club is specifically to sleep with higher and higher echelons of society, who cares? You'll probably eventually get something more enriching or interesting out of the experience. You'll meet people you would never have met in the dark recesses of a nightclub. And you'll have something interesting to discuss at the next get-together among friends who are still firmly stuck in their Netflix-and–Chinese food quicksand. But you have to take that first step.

Go online. Find meet-up groups. Ask a friend who is heavily involved in salsa dancing or her adult-education painting classes. Get over your fear of looking ridiculous by acknowledging that everyone looks as ridiculous as you in the beginner class. Invest the little bit of money it takes initially and understand that not every dollar you spend is going to buy something
completely tangible. Be your own motivational poster. Become that insufferable asshole at work who is always doing something fun and interesting and meeting new people. You can do it.

L
et's go out.
Are there any three words that simultaneously
mean so much and so little as these? If you're in your twenties, it's pretty much a guarantee that your friends, potential dates, or significant others are going to be hounding you to “go out” and ostensibly make the most of your evening every single night. Monday, your best friend got an office job, so you have to hit a club. Tuesday, someone got fired, so you have to commiserate over happy hour. Wednesday, everyone is hitting dollar draft nights at that bar that won't stop playing “These Boots Were Made for Walking” as though that were ever a good song. Thursday has been Thirsty Thursday since you were sixteen goddamn years old. Friday is date night. Saturday night has open bar at that pretentious lounge until eleven. Sunday is for the Bloody Mary brunch that somehow bleeds into early Monday morning. It's inescapable.

Of course, you can't say yes to all of these; you would die either of alcohol poisoning or starvation from no longer being able to afford to feed yourself. It's simply not an option, and even if you're getting taken out on a date one or two nights a week, it's not going to offset the cost of dancing in a circle with your friends the nights before and after. It's simply not an option to do it all at once. And, let's be honest, we can't quite go out the way we used to. It's tough but necessary to admit for a twentysomething that we're “young” but we're not “that young,” and constant binge drinking with friends is among the first things to get hacked off that list.

It's fairly easy to get stuck in the social quicksand of going out every night to drink; it's an obvious, universally accessible way to get everyone together and hanging out. It also enables everyone to be well-lubricated and capable of engaging in the various shenanigans and hijinks they won't permit themselves in the unforgiving light of day. And despite the insistence of many bars on charging upwards of $12 per cocktail, it can often be fairly affordable. But even if you're drinking at someone's house and therefore spending less on your night out than you would seeing a single movie, it is clearly unhealthy to find yourself constantly drinking every time the clock strikes five.

On the other hand, nights alone with take-out Thai, a rerun of your favorite TV show, and browsing Tumblr for vegan recipes to laugh at aren't going to be cute seven nights a week, either. Clearly, you need to strike a balance, but no one's there to tell us where to set the limits. If we listened to our parents, we would never leave the house except to go to work, on bike rides, or to check out a new museum exhibit that doesn't interest us. If we listened to our “party friends,” we would probably be addicted to crystal meth by now. If we accepted all the invites in our OKCupid inbox, we would become a less appealing version of a Katherine Heigl movie, perpetually rolling our eyes at lame first dates. (And/or we would become those heinous semihumans who literally only accept dates in order to exploit an unsuspecting suitor to get a free dinner, but those people are monsters, and
you're all cool and perfect.) There are many things we could be doing with our social calendar, and even with such pressing options on all sides, the balance can be struck.

As I mentioned before, we face a palpable divide in our twenties between those of us who have “real, big kid” jobs, and those of us who are left bowing at the altars of tips and retail. And though it is pretty clear that the “cool” ones—at least the ones able to look at friends with a subtle mix of pity and disdain at brunches—are the ones with professional jobs, this is one category in which they undoubtedly lose. Though having a professional job may provide you with the kind of disposable income that allows you to frequent clubs and lounges called Love/Hate or the Blue Room, it certainly doesn't leave you with the ability to sleep afterward. Having to wake up at 7:00 a.m. every morning for a commute, followed by eight hours in meetings and in front of computer screens doesn't exactly leave you wanting to scream at each other over David Guetta songs at the end of the day. Friends who work in the service industry, however, will be down as a clown to hit the after-hours club directly after their shift, and can do as many lines in the bathroom as they want, because their alarms are set the next day for a robust 4:00 p.m.