I love you too much to just "grab coffee"

On the merits of DOING things and making memories with the people we love.

Hi! I’m Sarah Von Bargen, newly-returned-from-a-3-year-sabbitical writer and digital marketer-for-hire. Every week we’ll be exploring ideas around spending our time, money, and energy on purpose + how to build a life we love that doesn’t make us broke or exhausted. I’m currently working with marketing retainer clients while not putting pressure on my creativity to pay all my bills. A++ would recommend!

I realized, a few months ago, that my midlife social life has slowly devolved to

• sending 15 texts so we can get something on the calendar for 3 weeks from now

• meeting at a coffee shop / restaurant

• each of us reciting “what we’ve been up to” and asking each other “So how’s work?” “How’s your family?” “Do you have any trips planned?”

That’s it.

And, I mean, it’s perfectly nice! It’s better than NOT seeing each other. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good and all that.

But!

I want to deepen my friendships. I want to make memories. I want to have the sorts of experiences that we will be able to tell stories about later and laaaaaaugh about how - while loading a trailer full of wood on the side of the road - I mistook my friend’s hand gesture for an invitation for a fist bump, thus essentially recreating this viral video.

But isn’t it hard enough to find a time that works for all of us busy adults? Why add in the difficulty of finding “interesting” things to do? WE HAD TO MAKE A DOODLE POLL TO FIND A TIME TO GET DINNER.

Here are my 3 favorite relatively easy ways to find fun things to DO with your friends so you can deepen your relationship + make more memories

📱 Facebook’s “Discover Events” tab

At this point, I’m only on Facebook for Marketplace and the Discover Events tab. You can sort by location, date, most popular or things your friends have expressed interest in. I’ve found so many funny, random events this way! (I’ve already been to two Ramsey After Dark events and they are a DELIGHT.)

📧 Your city’s visitor bureau newsletter

If they know what they’re doing, your city should be sending out regular emails, highlighting in bullet-pointed form all the fun events that are happening that week. Delivered right to your inbox with zero effort! (This is how I heard about the Saintly City Cat Show.)

🧠 Take Community Ed classes together

You know what I will always remember? Taking an “Auditioning For Actors” class with my friend Jordan and how one student developed a vendetta against the instructor and tried to lead a coup to get us all to stop attending because she thought the instructor talked too much. (More memorable than getting coffee.)

When you take a Community Ed class together, nobody has to decide what you’re doing or where you’re going. You just show up on the same day every week, in the same place, and someone tells you how to can tomatoes, or research your historic home, or read auras. You learn something, you see your friends, and they cost, like, $50 for 6 weeks of fun and togetherness.

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