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As I have written, I identified myself as an overweight guy who didn’t do much of anything. I went to work, I came home, and I was not social. I can’t identify myself in that way anymore because I’m more active and trying to be social. However, I am a baby when it comes to interacting with people. My weight used to hide me and give me an excuse to not have to deal with people.

As another strategy to break out of my shell, I signed up with Meetup groups in the area. Several are for photography and a general social Meetup. My wife and I made reservations to go and see a play and have dinner with about 20 other people from Meetup. That should be interesting. I’m actually quite terrified of how to act and what to say. Thankfully, my wife is going to be there with me and she doesn’t have these hang-ups. I can lean on her quite a bit.

For quite some time I’ve longed to have a group of guy friends. I watch movies like “The Hangover” or “Bachelor Party” and wish I had male friends that I can do things with like go to Vegas. I’d love to have a small but intimate group of guy friends to hang out, drink beer, eat chili dogs and cheese fries (burp!) and talk about whatever is on my mind. We could go out to see movies that my wife doesn’t want to see, play a little poker, car shows, chili cook-offs, fishing, paintball, you get the idea. All of those things guys like to do; I want to be able to do.

I was telling this to my therapist who suggested I look on MeetUp. I found many groups for women but none for guys to just hang out and be guys. So, I created a group for guys. Because of my self-esteem issues I have very low expectations for the group. I didn’t think anyone would actually join the group but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. I thought, “Oh well, I’ll create it and we’ll see what happens.” I paid for a group for 90 days because I figured that once this flopped, I wouldn’t be out a whole lot of money. Well, what happened is that I got 90 guys who signed up in just a few days. YIKES! So I guess this group might last a little longer than just three months.

When I created my “low expectation” group, I also created a happy hour. I picked a date and time I was available but I figured that since nobody would sign up that it would be a moot point. Monday night it not idea for a happy hour but since nobody was going to show up, it was not that big of a deal.

Within a couple of days, I had 15 men sign up for the happy hour. HOE. LEE. ****. I didn’t know I was filling such a void. Well crap, I guess that means I actually have to go and figure out where to have this thing. I really was expecting that no one would sign up for the Meetup, and no one would show up for the Happy Hour.

These are the kinds of things that the old me, the 330 pound me, would have thought: “I’m not worth it, so therefore no one is going to sign up.” However, this is the kind of thing I need to change my attitude about. I AM worth it. I AM interesting. People SHOULD like me, and if they don’t I’ll just beat the living crap out of them until they change their mind. Sorry, I got carried away!

Now, the Happy Hour is stressing me out because my wife is not going to be there. It’s going to be a bunch of guys I don’t know. It is all on me to make it a success. I don’t know how to act. I don’t know what to talk about. So we’ll have to see what happens. Anyway, that’s all the news that’s fit to print for today.