I'm Only Here for the WiFi by Chelsea Fagan Read Free Book Online Page B

nothing really counts in terms of social repercussions. You don’t have to be labeled so swiftly and cruelly by your choice of activity, the way you are in high school. You can dabble in a little of everything—including recreational drug use—without being defined by it. Everything is a hobby.
    But when you graduate, when you are spit out into the world in which 90 percent of people with whom you come in contact are your coworkers or crappy neighbors, what are you supposed to do? How do you continue to dedicate time to things that do notprovide you with money and, at least directly, do not contribute to your future? How do you just sign up for something for “fun,” and do it—especially when it isn’t centered around the consumption of alcohol? It seems intimidating to say the least, especially given how limited our free time is at this age. You come home at the end of a ten-hour workday, and the last thing you want to do is go to a pottery class at which you are going to struggle to make something even vaguely blob-shaped as fellow grown-ass adults snicker under their breath at your incompetence.
    It does seem exhausting, and the chances are high that you could end up making a fool of yourself more than anything else when it finally comes time to show up and participate, but the benefits certainly outweigh the risks. Think about it: You will be meeting new people who don’t work two cubicles down from you; you will potentially have a different pond in which to insert (tee-hee) your fishing rod and scavenge for romantic partners; and you may even learn something in the process (cue inspirational music). If you are feeling the ever-tighter grip of limited social options as a young adult in the working world, few things are more liberating than giving yourself a new outlet for hanging out.
    But which hobby is for you? There are so many different aspects of personal growth and enjoyment that a hobby can fulfill—it really depends on what you’re looking for. Generally, it’s best to pick three or four from a list of things that you want to get out of your new activity. The range of possibilities, at least in my humble experience, looks something like this:
    â€¢  Losing a certain amount of weight/getting in shape without having to go to the gym and be stared at by grunting, flexing bros and hot soccer moms in full makeup on the elliptical.
    â€¢  Meeting a new group of friends who will at least somewhat extricate you from your incestuous inner circle of people who cannot stop sleeping with, dating, and breaking up with each other at regular intervals.
    â€¢  Staving off having to sign up for online dating for at least a few more months with the hope that you’re going to meet the love of your life between the hours of 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. after work three days a week.
    â€¢  Potentially honing a skill that you would one day perhaps like to turn into a full-time career (a career that doesn’t make you vaguely consider suicide every time the alarm goes off).
    â€¢  Being able to tell people you meet about your exciting new activity, briefly giving the illusion that you are a multifaceted human being with interests outside of browsing the Internet for GIFs of cats and taking Photo Booth pictures of yourself holding a glass of wine.
    â€¢  Reconnecting with a friend or significant other by engaging in some new, fun thing with her that doesn’t include eating handfuls of cheddar popcorn and watching reality television (not that those things aren’t uplifting and wonderful).
    â€¢  Learning a new skill that you’ve always thought of as being really cool and something that, despite the likelihood that you will be terrible at it, you really want to try.
    No one hobby is going to cover all these bases, and that’s fine—you probably don’t need it to. But opening the door to having things to do throughout your week besides