Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The living room, in a classic literary twist, is the place where all the relics from the Great Self-Improvement Plan of ’07 went to die. My violin sits idly by the couch, destined to remain untouched for another hundred years. Where culinary mastery was supposed to create recipes expressible only through ancient slips of paper handed from generation to generation, there rests a jumble of takeout coupons on the coffee table. And the chess set has become an ad hoc calculator pedestal, assuming such furniture even exists, for a TI-85. Check and mate.

It’s not a complete wash, though, because all these pieces have been rolled into the Social Plan of ’08, the general idea of which involves doing things I enjoy and meeting people, rather than engaging for the sole purpose of socializing. There are limits, of course. The photos of the local chess club, for instance, look exactly as you’d imagine they’d look–a terrible judgment, I know–and I just don’t enjoy chess enough to wear actual blinders while playing.

But I suspect the chess club is having fun, even as I type another goddamn blog post in solitude, and therein lies the challenge. On one end of the spectrum, you’ve got the nerds who can happily congregate in chess or video games or epic fantasy warfare. You know, Dungeons & Dragons type stuff with cards and figures and +10 Odor of Unwashing. I’m a nerd, in case you haven’t noticed, and probably one of the worst variants: the self-conscious kind who sits at the table made of Elven Oak (i.e. particle board), wondering when the cool kids will break down the screen door (i.e. the Drawbridge of Gondor) to crucify me.

The cool kids gather at clubs and bars and Spring break, places where alcohol needs to be enjoyed, or at the very least tolerated. Chant the refrain all you want–”You don’t have to drink to have fun”–and you may as well serve me a pint of bullshit. The guy who only orders Cokes at the bar is, by definition, the odd one out. I remember sitting on a couch in a club one Chicago night and wondering, “What in blue hell am I doing here?” It’s like going to the barbershop because you love to read magazines, or making a stop at a bowling alley for the cuisine.

So there’s the spread. Too horrified by the prospect of pretending to be a wizard, too dry to understand the real magic of happy hour. If I were my own therapist, I’d probably punch myself in the face. I make no apologies for any of this, however, and I’m sticking to my guns. I need to make this work. Let’s see where this goes.