What’s the point?
Image by Fabricio Macedo FGMsp from Pixabay
My life for the past ten years has been an intense ride. Starting a family and changing the direction of your career has a steep price on the sleep account, among other things. The past week, however, one thing has been stuck in my head. If you never have time to hang out with friends or family, what’s the point?
I suppose I am not that different from anyone else when it comes to the socialization part. I used to be an extremely outgoing and extroverted person before when I had no responsibilities. But during the most intense career building years and changing baby diapers the social account has more or less died out completely. That’s not good. I have been improving things quite a lot on the wife-front as I have written about earlier this year a couple of times – Our morning coffee and one lunch-date per week routines – so that part is under control and healthy now. So, now it is time to divert some more power to the friend and family account.
A year ago, when I turned 40, I invited a bunch of very old friends for dinner and arranged a sleepover. And I haven’t had more fun in many, many years for sure. It seemed like everyone agreed on that. This year I am arranging something similar, a retro LAN-party with a similar bunch of old friends. This is a “Marmite-activity” I believe. You either love it or you don’t. There’s no in between. It was interesting to see the various responses I get when I invite people over. Few people have accepted, but those that did seem really keen on the idea. One guy even jumps on an airplane to attend, I love it. Even if you like the idea of hanging out with old friends, I think you need to have quite a lot of interest for the topic. Some of my friends might have grown up from gaming. Personally, maybe I never really grew up. Many of those old games are so much fun still today and I fire them up from time to time. But a proper LAN-party, that must be about two decades since the last time.
I have had this idea bubbling in the back of my head for several years. But I didn’t really get my hands dirty and started to work on the project actively until about a year ago. Just imagine how much time it takes to acquire the hardware. Then double that, to figure out how to configure the software. Perhaps some of the games were better before, but the usability was most definitely not. It is proper difficult to get a 25-year-old machine built with parts salvaged from a garage, to boot with no hickups and get all the expansion cards working. Setting up the network and getting it to talk with my existing home network wasn’t easy either. All of this work might seem utterly pointless, and maybe it is. But there is something that tickles my fancy with restoration and repair work. And I have learned a ton of new IT stuff on the way. The good thing is that the foundational standards that a PC is based on are pretty much the same today as they were in the 1990s. I have combined a lot of modern era equipment like SSD drives, modern (safe) power supplies and quiet fans with the old stuff. It is nice that you can interconnect computer parts in that way, that might be literally differ 25 years in age.
Anyway, the choice of activity doesn’t really matter. The important thing is to do something and engage with your mates. When looking in my calendar, I realize that I am so bad that friend activities (excluding the odd lunch) are down to about two times per year. At least one time per quarter sounds more reasonable. If I can’t even meet up with old friends four times per year, there must be something wrong with my priorities.