Along with registering my gripes with travel, I hereby register my gripes with Doing Stuff. Apparently a completely fulfilling life of staying in your cozy home watching movies that have been deposited in your mailbox is "uncool." We have to Go Somewhere and Do Stuff in order to be having A Good Time.
Lileks, of course:
But in the great middle expanse of your life, you not only want to spread out, you want to be left alone, and this is taking on the characteristic of an anti-social sentiment. You should be walking around the dense neighborhood window-shopping and eating at small fusion restaurants. You should be engaged. If you want to watch a quality foreign film, good, but you should not watch it home; you should walk down to the corner theater and see it in a room full of other people, and nevermind that the start time is inconvenient and you can’t pause it to go pee and the fellow in the row behind you is aerating the atmosphere with tubercular sputum. This is how they do things in New York.
Apparently there's a movie theater in town where you can see a movie over dinner and drinks; you sit at tables and they serve you food while the movie is playing. Or something like that, I've never been. But another hip young couple here is always telling us that we should be Doing Things like going to this innovative movie theater, or schlepping to the big city to go out to dinner, or heading to the beach to surf, or doing yoga, or whatever else they do with all their free time. People look at us like we're freaks when we say we've never been to the big city that's an hour away, that we've never been to the beach, that we don't eat out in restaurants. Apparently we'd have "so much fun, and it'd be romantic too" spending fifty bucks for a dinner I can make at home. And what knitter wants to watch a movie whilst eating food? Movies were invented to help knitters feel less idle; I've gotten good enough that I can watch a movie with subtitles while knitting from a chart, but I still can't do much in the darkness of a movie theater. And certainly not with a plate of food in front of me.
Nevermind that we own French, Swedish, Korean, and Serbian movies and have animated discussions about Obama and deficit spending over our homecooked meals; life is not fulfilling unless you leave the house. The looks I get from people my age indicated that we're simply not cool if we don't Go Do Things.
Call me uncool then.
Posted by Sarah at February 22, 2008 02:53 PM | TrackBackCall me uncool too! People are always saying: isn't it boring living in the small city after leaving the metropolis of Los Angeles? Um, no...Netflix still has a 1 2 day turn-around, Walmart and Target are down the road...and now I just feel less guilty about being a homebody, because I pretend to lament that there is less "to do" around here.
By the way, $50 on a meal: we went to Outback for dinner once, because we were in a mood of "we have to go out for dinner, because we need to get out of the house"...that dinner cost us $50...and it was so disappointing that it has become more ammunition for our homebody selves: $50 on crappy food. Everytime we spend near $50, we say: well, it is better spent than dinner at Outback.
Plus, like you say: why go out to hang out with your bestfriend and have to behave all proper, and avoid certain topics of conversation, when you can stay in, and both fart, joke about dumb people on TV and be happy at home on the sofa?
It's just my observation, but I've concluded that people who are less content with their lives need more outside stimulation/entertainment, need to spend money for others to cater to them in some way - movies, concerts, food, experiences.
You seem very settled, content, happy, and continually challenged to me. I love reading your blog about all these topics.
You have nothing to explain or apologize for.
Homebodies rule! I believe they have the richest inner lives and that is what matters most!
It took some thinking for me to reply to this. Deep thinking...
I came to the conclusion that this thing of having to go do things is a little bit of not growing up. The idea of having to be out and about and with the right people in the right places is in my opinion, just a little bit juvenile, high schoolish, or in another word sophomoric. Many people keep this up into their 70's and older. Speaking as a homebody who never really liked going out for the sake of going out, I just don't get it. Never have. I've never been to Vegas and have never wanted to go there. I am not one to go to "shows", not even the movies. If it comes on TV I might sit through the whole thing, might not. Hmmm.... maybe I am a stick in the mud. But hey, wanna come listen to the whooping cranes with me?
That's when I get excited. And I can hear them outside, everyday. That's why I like home.