Friends are great. I doubt too many people would argue with that statement.
Tomorrow is my birthday, and so tonight I organised a gathering of random people from all walks of life, with one common thread, I count them as friends.
At least for the past 10 years I’ve felt that I’ve had a bunch of semi isolated groups of friends. Some people seem to have a group of friends that they share across lots of avenues, I’ve never really had that. Instead they seem to be seemingly unrelated groups, that I meet individually and I enjoy seeing them interact with one another at events I hold.
My girl friend was asking me to organise some form of celebration, and I struggled for weeks as to how the format of this celebration would happen. The typical thing would be to go to dinner. But my issue there is once you exceed 6 people on the table, it’s starts to get awkward with some on the end feeling left out, etc. plus I’m sick of the local food scene in town (within the dietary requirements I was trying to juggle. I had gluten free, fodmap, vegetarian, lactose free, paleo & normal human). If it was summer I would throw a BBQ in the entertaining area out the back. Unfortunately it’s about 2 oC tonight, so outdoor entertaining is out of the question. So I bit the bullet, and cooked up a storm of Australia Mexican (I’m sure real Mexican is completely different). Basically finger food that can be eaten as a group in the lounge room around the fireplace. No need for tables, or even cutlery, plus it can provide a space of no barriers to communicate with one another.
It’s fun catching up with people and introducing across these silos, so that different people can put a face to each other. The funny observation, a lot of my friends (myself included) are dream big, dream often, start the next project, before the last one is fully finished sort of people, at least half of the room was creative people like that. I hadn’t even connected the dot until tonight.
I want to be able to facilitate building spaces where people can come together and share ideas and dive deep into concepts and dreams. I feel that food and a warm lounge is the perfect space for that to happen.
One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten old, the ability to create friends and meet new people becomes harder, especially if you just carry on doing the same activities and job year after year. I think that makes the current friends all the more valuable.
To my friends who were able to make it tonight, thank you. To those who couldn’t, I hope to see you next time, at the next gathering.
Thanks for thinking big & dreaming up the future with me.