{"id":6135,"date":"2024-10-29T08:01:38","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T07:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6135"},"modified":"2024-10-29T08:01:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T07:01:38","slug":"gone-fishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6135","title":{"rendered":"Gone Fishing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a Friday on a long weekend. Joy is ebullient within the flat. Even the dog and cat are getting along (i.e. not shrieking at each other). Lurking in the back of my head are my evening plans. Hiding behind that is the joy of knowing that for the rest of the weekend I have no plans at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not sure when it happens as you age or, as my pretend mental therapist Julio calls it, \u2018careening towards your final just desserts\u2019. But I view plans as a direct, almost personal insult. It should be nice to get invited places. But I just can\u2019t see it like that. My Friday plans were all pleasant and involved nothing more taxing than getting together for dinner and drinks with a couple of friends. I didn\u2019t even need to wear underwear. And yet, at the appointed time I slogged out of my house and limped towards the metro. I cursed my primate ancestors that decided social behavior was a developmental imperative. I had just taken off my pjs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Burke always says \u2018you\u2019ll have fun when you\u2019re there\u2019 or \u2018you\u2019ll be happy when you get there\u2019 and she\u2019s always, infuriatingly right about that. I had a wonderful time and sure enough my Friday plans even enhanced the rest of the weekend\u2019s inaction. But still. I never knew that aging meant making plans and then praying for a natural disaster to force them to cancel. For the three hours before I go out to meet friends (again, friends, not colleagues I don\u2019t like, not my boss \u2013 friends) I look at my phone with thumbs held and fingers crossed. \u2018Come on, come on, a call from the governor\u2019. Nothing. Drat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes I accidentally reflect of myself as a young person. After I recover from the three-minutes\u2019 worth of shuddering and wincing this elicits, I sit in awe. I used to work as a bartender \u2013 at night. Not only at night, but until like 3 a.m. And then I would go somewhere with my bartender buddies and have drinks until around 5 a.m. Here\u2019s the kicker: On the nights I didn\u2019t bartend, I still went to a bar and I stayed there all night (or until one of my eyes gave up the ghost and crossed the other\u2019s line of vision like a broken desk lamp). It\u2019s almost impossible for me to comprehend my young actions now. I had a flat full of books, a DVD collection (yes, I\u2019m that old. Even some VHS cassettes!). And yet, instead of stay in that house and read and recline on a couch in a body that didn\u2019t yet creak and bones that didn\u2019t yet ache just because it\u2019s October, I went out. The FOMO was strong in me.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I need a Cheat Code to help me avoid going out. To this day, my dad\u2019s \u2018stomach is off\u2019 whenever there\u2019s an event he\u2019s been invited to he doesn\u2019t want to go to. He then watches TV and settles his stomach with 5,000 calories of chocolate snacks. My friends with kids have a clear out for things they don\u2019t want to do. My kids are sick. I have my kids that night. How can you argue? Bring \u2018em! Who doesn\u2019t love kids at a bar? I need a Cheat Code Out of going out.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am busy with work, true, but when I use that too often people begin to show concern for my mental health (more than usual). I\u2019ve thought about having a general \u2018No\u2019 policy with going out and occasionally signalling my intent to break it, but this also might put up some red flags. Perhaps I\u2019ll tell people I\u2019ve gone for Trump and buying one of the moron hats. I can\u2019t imagine anyone wanting to spend time with a person as stupid as that. Also, I have mirrors in my house and I\u2019d like to be able to keep looking in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the old days, when someone didn\u2019t want to do something, they used the understood-by-all excuse \u2018Gone Fishing\u2019. Now, were they really fishing? Who knows. We only know that they\u2019re not coming out on a cold Friday evening and they are experiencing the bliss of no FOMO.      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a Friday on a long weekend. Joy is ebullient within the flat. Even the dog and cat are getting along (i.e. not shrieking at each other). Lurking in the back of my head are my evening plans. Hiding behind that is the joy of knowing that for the rest of the weekend I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1AX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6137,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions\/6137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}