Let me be the second person bird on your shoulder which is neither the angel nor the devil but something that is better and worse than both of those entities combined.
I am really coming into my own with this themed party planning stuff I’ve got going for a while now. So the opportunity to now potentially do it for 2 people in under a month is not met with internal resistance. In fact my brain is already calculating logistics and costs and past mistakes.
I think this is because the idea has changed from a personal thing I create and manage and plan and get done for myself to a community thing I can do to make my friends happy and have a good time. What do I love if not people. (I am also a hater which I think is just further evidence of my love)
I like big fancy affairs where I can (accidentally) be the center of attention of but also more importantly I really like when I can go over the top and do a big showy display of effort. Effort is cool. Effort is sexy.
I am undeniably pushy and annoying and making decisions for the group (but only because I know everyone’s dietary preferences and I will take it all into consideration and make the choice!!) so I don’t know how taking up the mantle of heavily involving myself in their birthday planning is going to translate but I live to be the person that pushes the hesitant ideas into reality so I’m going to do it anyway. I think I want to be the second person in their lives that is not only encouraging but actively helping them convert their whimsical thoughts into reality.
I have started this process already by rejecting my friend’s own idea for their birthday theme which is something you can do if you are an obnoxious person like me. I am going to make sure they are more important and the center of their party instead of just a slightly more important person than everyone else there.
My first goal is to make sure that the theme is something that involves everyone invited to put in effort for the person, a medium to translate their affection for the said person into action. My second goal is to make sure everyone is having a good time while doing things they would never have imagined doing before.
I don’t think I could be the parrot on the pirate’s shoulder. My aim is to be a more annoying, slightly smaller twittering version of a sparrow that you are affectionately swatting away. In this form I want to be a second opinion that is not an internal validation (like a GPT response) but more of medium that is helping you translate all your crazy omg-that-is-too-much-effort-to-do-irl-but-it-would-be-so-great ideas into realities.
There is a lot of eco chamber like validation you can get out of social media for the things you stand for and the things you like but it also kills your motivation to actually ever action on those things. The ease and relief you get from these platforms, takes away from the process of sitting in the unease and letting it fester till you reach a point where the only thing that can make you feel better is actual movement.
I kind of want to bring this movement back into my friend’s lives. It is not enough to think of a cool idea and tell four people who also like it and just end it there. I want to nudge them (forcibly if needed) to change all of that into real tangible things they can hold.
I now feel obliged to document the process of said birthdays and how they will unfold. Maybe another blog post with all those details will be up in a month.
Till then I’ll be a mildly annoying bird twittering you into action.
Written in response to the indie webclub prompt for the month of September