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Every weekend I watch as hordes of drunken buffoons go off to clubs and dance halls and booze dens, screaming and hollering the entire way, and every weekend I am torn. On the one hand, I’d love to have the ability to drop my mental hang ups and just go crazy, but, on the other, the Friday and Saturday missions of drinking and hunting for strange ladies seem dull and mindless. Truth be told, I enjoy the company of quality ladies and am a fan of drunken buffoonery, but both activities have become brainless quests of conquest. I very rarely see people’s fun times as anything more than an escape from work and study, two pillars of life that give a bad name to brain activity (fun has become synonymous with visceral pleasures and avoidance of deep thoughts).
So, Internet, I’ve thought about this and have come up with some ways that you can insert some brain function into your free time (thus enriching your lives).
First, convert a night of drinking and dancing into a crazy ass scavenger hunt. It sounds like a lot of work, but the payoff is awesome. All you need is a competitive spirit and highly cruel friends (and a tolerance for being the asshole in any given scheme). Give the group a set of challenges they have to accomplish by the end of the night, and the subsequent evening will be incredibly epic and a triumph of the playful mind. Challenges could range from getting a lady’s digits to convincing someone you are from a foreign country (doing both at the same time is worth double points). Or, to make it difficult, you could reenact scenes from famous novels and films (once appropriately liquored up).
Something else you could do is relive childhood adventures as adults. One of my colleagues here has written about blanket and pillow forts; do that! Or have Nerf or water gun wars all over town, like when you were lil’ kids. The brainwork here is neither logical nor analytical, but imaginative, a function we adults forget a lot about (especially in our free time). Or turn off your phones and computers and build stuff, like crossbows, go-carts, and machines that do all kinds of stuff (my dad once built a Tesla coil for no reason just because he could). Be creative without obvious gain.
If you don’t like games and construction projects, then do random acts of extravagance. On a given party evening, get fancy and make some difficult to cook foods and drink slightly more expensive wine. The act of cooking new recipes and conserving alcohol because of price will alight in the mind damn classy conversation (the subsequent grossness of the evening a nice juxtaposition for your social life).
Lastly, I’ll say that something we should all do is find a nemesis. Not, like, one that will destroy you, but a fun one (like an existing friend that ticks you off). Elevate the average messing with someone’s Facebook page into a dastardly deed, inciting a rivalry rife with fun times. There’s nothing that keeps you on your toes more than actually being the villain or hero to your life’s narrative. Whenever you are bored, switch off the TV or Internet stream, steal a non-expensive item from your friend/enemy’s room, and write a set of clues to get it back. Nothing’s better than a healthy mind game once in awhile, especially when it’s placed neatly in the broad scheme of drinking, partying, and often wasted free time.
