My Five Step Guide to Hang City
I popped on Ezra Klein’s podcast to hear about the importance of “Hangin’ Out” and the loneliness epidemic. We, as a country, are getting lonelier. I, as a father am rallying against loneliness. This not only feels right to me, but it seems like science is starting to lineup behind me. Getting together with people, sharing conversations, some hijinks. It’s good for you. It’s good for your body, for your mind, for the planet. I struggle with plenty of things relating to my health. But I find my way to hanging out. It does take work, maybe not the same work as a gym, but work all the same. This podcast seemed to embrace a bit of that premise, making good hangs take effort. And that process takes so much more effort once you have children. Once you have children you are basically spending some kind of money, literal or transactional anytime you’re involved in a hang that doesn’t involve your children. Maybe it’s a babysitter, maybe it’s your spouse watching the kids, but somehow or another, the time you get to spend with your friends free of much of an agenda. . .it is limited, it is costly, it is protracted.
But I think the problem is that many of my agemates and fellow parents are toiling in the worst part of hang-out-valley. When you are valiantly trying to conjure each hang from fresh cloth, a new location, a new day of the week, a new set of variables —-you put in a lot of effort for something too elusive already. The way to curve “the hang” towards easy-to-execute is simple, just follow my five steps to hang city:
Cast a Wide Net - Dessa used to have a good line about the music business—it’s got a lot more in common with trapping than with hunting. Plant a bunch of seeds and see what comes to you. Instead of banking on that one friend who is a little flaky, fortify your crew with some ancillary invites. In the same way you’ll never know who exactly you’ll fall in love with, you don’t know exactly who you’ll fall in friend with. Your friend might not actually be the person you work with, it might be that person’s brother, it might be one more degree of separation from your friends. Cast that wide net, know that a bunch of the invites might get lip service but no real attendance, but if that net is wide, you’re still making those friends.
Limit the Variables - In mid-life friendship world you need to limit, not nullify, but limit the variables. If you and your friend like drinking coffee. . .drink coffee most everytime. Watching basketball? Grab the remote. Neighborhood walks? Lace the shoes. This doesn’t mean you can’t switch it up, but you have a NORM to deviate from. That’s the move.
Don’t be the Phoenix Suns of the Aughts - The going wisdom of hanging out is that no one actually wants to do it. Everyone is overwhelmed, they need to put some more work in on their dayjob tonight, the kids have games all day, the in-laws come soon and the spouse wants to stay home and clean the house. These excuses are all true, but the fundamental guess is wrong. Nobody can hang out and EVERYBODY wants to hang out. There are even podcasts about it. The Phoenix Suns had about 65% of the idea of the current era of basketball about six years early. They ran fast, they chucked up a “bunch of threes” and didn’t always have a big man. The problem is that the magic of the modern game actually reveals itself when you are doing closer to 100% of the idea. What used to pass for a bunch of threes from the Suns is paltry by today’s standards. Since the Phoenix Suns results of the D’Antoni/Nash experiment weren’t decisive, and they didn’t win any titles, it was easy to think that the problem was going too far with the run-and-gun style. The retrospective ruling by some basketball thinkers I respect is that it wasn’t going far enough. Your friends want to hang out. Everyone thinks it was better when we hung out more. Why do we always talk about those times? Why do we look back to the roommate era? To the “I’ll see somebody I know era”? To the “they’re playing again tomorrow, should we come back again?” era? WE ARE NOT GOING BACK TO THAT ERA. Can’t, can’t swing it, we legit do have kids, you really do have a dayjob. We aren’t going to watch an episode of First Date and roll 15 deep to Green Mill for their cold spinach dip in a cavern of chewy bread. But everyone wishes we were, so you aren’t weird for trying to bring in more of that. When you chuck up a bunch of threes you’re going to see that average dwindle. That’s okay, nothing wrong with that. Look at all the ones you’re making.
Put Yourself in the Other Person’s Position - Have you ever once gotten a text inviting you to a friend hang and thought “man, that guy is an asshole for sending that”??? No, you haven’t. Cause you are a person who likes hanging out, or at bare ass minimum doesn’t dislike being invited to hang out. You’re happy you got the invite, you’re bummed you can’t go, you hope you can make something happen soon. What you think is what everyone thinks. You aren’t risking much by asking, it’s not rude to ask. Let them say no, who really cares? You got this big ass net. Have you ever honestly gone to someone’s house and gone “holy shit I can’t believe they didn’t clean”?? Sure you have. You definitely would say that about my house but then if you are plugged in right you’d think, I’m cool, my kids are cool, let’s hang. Most people don’t have all the conditions required for a hang that you think they do. And when you find out the people who do have those conditions, pivot or cancel. Do you and do it well.
Be there when you’re there - Get off of your phone when the hang actually happens. Don’t just talk to your kid at the playdate, she doesn’t want to talk to you that much. Talk to the mommies and the daddys, find out what folks are in to. These folks miss their dumb years with roommates, with impromptu road trips to Duluth. . .and even though you won’t be able to get all of that back, it will actually sometimes be easier to find that youthful capriciousness with a new person in your life rather than the folks you actually cooked your 20s with.
Boom, that’s how you develop a healthy social life in five easy steps. No just kidding, there’s a lot more to it. I think the folks who are facing serious bouts of loneliness aren’t one cheeky blog post away from finding a different rhythm. But the thing is, we are all on continuums of loneliness. And if this little blog post hits you right and turns you from a hang once a month person into a three times a month person, you are probably helping bring one person who is more supremely lonely into the hang once a quarter person. You start spreading the hangs and it gets easier, and it makes your work easier, makes your weekends better. Slowly and also somehow suddenly, you aren’t as quite in the shit, you’ve found a little different rhythm, and you’re shining.