I believe I may have finally discovered a formula for having a good time in a noisy crowded nightclub, something I have been unable to do for years, and regret. If already you know how to have a good time in a noisy crowded nightclub, this article is not for you. This is for those of us who largely have no idea how to have a good time in such a place.
Tonight, for complicated and irrelevant reasons, I went to a noisy crowded nightclub playing bad music that I don't normally like full of people that I normally react negatively to. I was shifting uncomfortably around a bottle of beer, not having a good time, as you might expect, when the formula outlined below basically popped into my head from nowhere. I followed it, and it seemed to work. I'm currently seriously wondering if it might work again, and if it would work for anyone else, which is what has motivated this essay.
As a preliminary, if you are addicted to any drug of any sort, or if you habitually drink, smoke, smoke weed, take pills, whatever, assume from the outset that you might do any and all of them, if offered, and that if you do, it will be ok and don't worry about it.
Nightclubs are not the time or place to be fighting your addictions or wondering whether or not alcohol - or whatever drug X replaces that for you - is a good idea. Allow yourself to say no or yes according to what you fancy and what is sensible. Obviously, avoid anything known to be life threatening to you specifically, especially if you're telling yourself you're only doing it on my say-so. You're not. Meanwhile, denying that drugs can help you find a way to have a good time is as wrong as imagining that drugs are all you need to have a good time, and I am pretty sure that some kind of middle way here is the answer.
Bear in mind that this preliminary may mean nothing more than the fact that I am trying - with mixed success so far - to give up cigarettes myself at the moment, and allowed a moment of weakness (four extended moments of weakness in fact) during my attempt to find a formula for having a good time this evening.
I guarantee that if you follow 1 to 3, you are by now smiling. If at any point you feel you are not enjoying yourself for no obvious reason, return to 3 for a bit. If you lose it completely and start being miserable again, return to 1, and work quickly through to randomly blessing everyone.
After completing the formula, by the way, you're on your own, Jim. I have no idea what happens next, nor of how to make sense of it. It's more fun than being miserable though.
If the blessing people bit in point 3 doesn't come naturally to you - and it didn't to me - just force yourself consciously to do it until you find yourself doing it. It is possible that this is actually the only thing you need to do, but 1 and 2 seemed to help get me to a state where I could manage it.
All points of the formula can be done entirely in your head, whether you are standing, sitting or skulking, being squashed at the bar or wherever you may end up in said nightclub. If you prefer other systems to the chakra system, use them instead, but if they're all chemical and none of them mental, be aware that the formula may not work.
In a nutshell, the formula is: any way you can, do whatever it takes to let your whole body and soul be balanced and relaxed, then go around mentally blessing people indiscriminately, whether you would be inclined normally so to do or not, until you find yourself having a good time.
What happened to me the first and indeed only time I tried the above formula was nothing spectacular, and bore no direct fruit other than that I made it in and out of a large noisy nightclub with a couple of friends, having danced a bit - despite having really not thought I was going to - with the genuine impression of having had a good time, even though I don't normally like that nightclub or that kind of music. I was not catapulted into the usual bout of alcoholic or melancholic oblivion, which has been the inevitable result of my going out for the vast majority of my life hitherto. I think I would have an even better time if I tried the formula somewhere where the music was more to my taste.
If this all seems like so much mumbo jumbo bullshit to you, be aware that you have to suspend judgement of whether or not this is a good idea, or even makes any sense, until after trying it. If you already know how to have a good time when going out, you can't meaningfully do so, since you would have had a good time anyway, and you can't know whether or not you have had a better time because of the formula or something else that happened. If, like me - hopefully until tonight - you don't know how to have a good time, you should try something else if you don't try this, because it's shit feeling like shit all the time. Either way, there's no point in guaranteeing that something that is essentially all going on in your own head will not work by doubting it in the moment of experiment.
If you are serious about trying this out but have no system for relaxing, go find one or make one up, until you have one that works. Look up 'Chakras' on the Internet and use those - just assume they exist for a bit and see what happens. Or find some other way of relaxing - I have found yoga very helpful - and there seem to be all kinds of books about relaxation floating around, one of which, somewhere, may well work for you.
Seekers, this is not the Holy Grail. It is the tinest reflection of a fraction of a small portion of it, and those who understand the first sentence will know by this one that I have no real idea of what I am talking about. However, I am serious about this formula, and since the current sample of statistics describing the outcome of attempts at carrying it out is incredibly tiny, being one, to take it as anything more than an entirely speculative essay - which it is not - it needs to be attempted multiple times, by different people, and constructively criticised. Hence this rushing into publication via the good offices of the 'Swallow' internet magazine.
I don't care that some people may find it 'sad' or in some way peculiar that I am concerning myself with the notion of a formula for having a good time when I go out. If having a good time when you go out comes naturally to you, it is difficult to comprehend the predicament of those of us to whom it does not. But it is vitally important for those of us who struggle with this to find a way out of it.
It's bloody miserable being bloody miserable the whole time, and I am currently making a serious go of stopping doing it. This is part of that go, and on that basis could be interpreted unkindly as little more than a cry for help, pompously written up in an unnecessarily florid manner. However, I genuinely believe not only that I may have stumbled upon something that might help me in future, but that it may also help other people who have, like me, been trying to work out how to enjoy themselves and failing. I'd particularly like to read comments from any members of the 'Swallow' readership - either one of you will do - who has a similar or better method, or who tries this one.
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