I was always under the impression that one of the areas of my life that was always a bit lacking was my ‘social life’. Much of that is to do with the way a so called ‘social life’ is manifested in the media, on tv and film, and how we have learned to define it. I always thought social life meant getting out, going to things, seeing people in an environment where you were doing things together, going to movies, museums, theatre, clubs.  The call in the wind “what are you up to this weekend….. got anything exciting planned?’ always sort of passed me by.

As a child I do not remember there being much of a social whirl going on in our house. My mother organised one dinner party when we were kids. This was because they had been invited to a ‘dinner party’ by some more middle classy parents and they felt they had to recipricate…I remember there being a lot of nerves about it. We had very few visitors to the house. And I remember the visitors on one hand, and some very interesting visitors we had. Because my Dad’s job was helping people, the end of the day I think it was about coming home and shutting the door and having private time. His job was his social life. Lots of people are like that, and the idea of going out after a hard week of work, being with people, is the last thing many people want to do.  Where and when did it happen that we were lead to believe that a full and hectic social life was a requisite of a fulfilled existance?

I remember having a job at the end of my 20’s with a bunch of people the same age as me who, when asked the question”what are you doing this weekend?’ were able to recite a long list of what seemed to me exciting events with friends which had obviously been organised with some amazing efficiency during the weeks leading up to their weekend -when did they find to plan all this?. I was fairly stunned as this was something I never had had any type of training in.

I spent most of my 20’s working at night in bars and clubs as there really were no real jobs in the 80’s for someone with a degree in performance arts, and I wanted to spend most of my days writing songs and rehearsing with musicians. There were very few gigs – I did a few, some you had to pay to play, so my work was my social life and my time off was writing and playing. In my thirties when I became a music teacher and taught 500 students a week music, I had very little energy left at the end of the week to do anything apart from sleep, my ‘social’ had all been used up in my work.

So what is a social life? I STARTED TO DO A BIT OF DIGGING . I went  went to this blog michi-how-we-define-social-life ‘What is the definition of “social life?” At the most basic, social life is the combination of various components: activities, people, and places. While all of those components are required to define a social life, the nature of each component is different for every person, and can change for each person, as affected by a variety of external influences.’ So activities , people and places.

Social -from wiki .The term Social refers to a characteristic of living organisms (humans in particular, though biologists also apply the term to populations of other animals). It always refers to the interaction of organisms with other organisms and to their collective co-existence, irrespective of whether they are aware of it or not, and irrespective of whether the interaction is voluntary or involunary .

That is interesting, as much of our ‘social life’ -is not something we plan or have any control over. It could be considered to be anytime we have interacting with other people in our lives. That can be at work, on the bus, buying sandwiches in the deli for lunch, at events we go to because we feel we mus,t as well as  social events we consiously choose to add to our ‘social calendar’ .

The Macmillan Dictionary’s definition of Social Life is ‘the time that you spend enjoying yourself with friends’

But here we are…THE MISSING LINK..DOING SOMETHING WITH FRIENDS!

Now that is something I am  aware of is that many of us work so hard, because we have to  or because we want to that we forget  forget to keep in touch with our friends, and it is not about where we go with them, or what we do with them but just making sure we keep in touch …somehow.

Ok enough…let’s watch my bands newest video aptly named

DRAW A LINE IN THE SAND…edited in the time when I was not being sociable