On Organizing Your Friends (AKA Herding Cats)

Hanging out with your friends is great. Hanging out with a whole bunch of them is even better. Hanging out with a bunch of them on a regular basis is the absolute best. The only problem is making that happen is impossible, and it only gets harder every year.

A lot of things about being a kid kinda suck: you’re small, you have no money, you can’t drink or smoke or rent a car. But, on the other hand, you might have a parent or parents who organize play dates for you. They may put you on a soccer team or in an art class or subject you to karate lessons. If you’re lucky, you’ll be doing these activities with your friends, or since you’re a kid, you’ll make friends along the way (seriously, how do adults make new friends that aren’t work friends).

Once you grow up though, this kind of organization is as difficult as performing rocket surgery on a rollercoaster. In the before pandemic times, I ran an after-work softball team for my friends and let me tell you, getting 9 other people to show up for a 1-hour commitment, once a week, was damn near impossible. And this was something they ostensibly wanted to do! They paid money to do it! And then when the time came, each week it was like trying to herd cats. And that doesn’t even factor in the players/friends that moved to the west side, or Boston, or South America.

Not only is it unbelievably hard to get adults on the same page, I’m not even really sure how or where to do it anymore! Obviously, a text thread with 15 people on it immediately turns into a nightmare. I don’t think I have even 20% of my friends’ emails, and even if I did, I think we all get plenty of emails these days (you don’t need ten more from me begging one of you to play second base this week). Facebook used to be the easiest place to get your friends together… until it was taken over by grandparents, crazy aunts and uncles, people who apparently are obsessed with ingesting horse de-wormers, and straight up Nazis. Now I only go on Facebook once a week to post these thoughts from my dumb brain, and I think that’s probably more often than most people my age!

So, what the heck is a guy to do? Skywriting seems like a viable option but coordinating multiple cities and time zones is probably outside of my mathematical capabilities.  I could try mailing post cards but with the state of the USPS I don’t think timeliness is exactly their calling card. I keep trying to use telepathy and psychokinesis but I’m not connecting with any beings on this plane of existence and now all my spoons are bent.

I’m genuinely curious how all of you organize your friends in this time of strange social media, inbox inflation, Facebook fascism, and post office procrastination?