Yes, I have FOMO (but I have my reasons)

It’s been almost 2 months since my last post. In 2 months more can happen than what any of us comprehend. Since my last post, there have been loads of events including a Park Acoustics, the Grind Radio launch (where I briefly made an appearance before throwing up and passing out in my friend Armandt’s bakkie), birthdays, people moving away, earthquakes, Ebola and Oppikoppi which I was unable to make due to the fact that I am even poorer than I was before because I bought my very first car.

That sounds impressive but it’s just a 1989 Uno. The days of using my money to “create” memories only to blackout and not remember anything, are for now at least, a thing of the past. I have so much to do that I can barely sleep at night. And there just isn’t enough money coming in. I have to get glasses because my eyes are fucked which will become a problem for some of you because then I’m going to see what hideous creatures you really are. I have to get my license and to do my learners for the fucking 3rd time because just like the condoms in my wallet, it has expired.

Then I will have to fix the various things on Juno (that’s what I call my car. It rhymes with Uno and also the car is baby blue and in the movie she gets a baby boy. I like the movie okay. Don’t judge me.) The speedometer doesn’t work, the reverse lights don’t work and the wiper needs to be fixed. It also needs a new battery and a radio. So, that’s a few months of my tiny salary gone and then I need to get myself a new phone because the one I currently use is more useless than a matric certificate and also I need something with a GPS because all of my years on the road has been spent in the passenger seat gawking at hot girls in their Fiestas and Polos rather than focusing on the roads and where they lead to (much like my life).

The wedding of my good friends Michael and Adelia is also coming up. It was going to take place in December but they had to move it up to October because they got the exciting news that she is expecting (once again, congratulations guys!) so I have to get a suit as well. Even though I own a suit, I want one that I actually like. I’m over wearing the suit my brother bought me in 2006 for the Matric dance that has always been a size too big for me. So, there is a lot to do.

I also want to save money so that I can go on my first proper vacation in December since 2007. Before we know it, it’s going to be 2015 after all. Time is a funny thing, just like the earth and our lives. It feels like were standing still but we are actually busy spinning at 1675 km/h.

It’s clear how time is affecting us. 21st birthday parties have made way for bachelor parties and weddings and that will make way for the birth of our kids or vice versa (depending on which side of Pretoria you live). Those will soon make way for 30th’s, 40th’s, etc. etc and through these years you are constantly going to lose friends and people along the way to marriage, fatherhood, fights, emigration and God forbid, death.

Slowly but steadily we are getting older and our social lives are evolving with it. None of us generally go to the square anymore. Not just because it’s a mere shade of the busy student party life it once was, but because we are roughly almost 10 years older than some of the kids hanging out there. Girls get asked their ID’s twice at the square – once at the entrance by security and the second time by us, just to make sure that we’re not about to make out with a 16 year old and become labelled as sexual predators. The square was once upon a time our Mecca, a living entity.

I remember at a time when Ralph and I were working at Crawdaddy’s, we would basically be in the square every single night. We would be there the nights that we weren’t working and be there after our shifts were done on the nights we were. Some of the best parties and memories were made there and friends were also made. But those days are gone. Time has not only been unkind to the square, but to us as well. Those days I could easily party every night. Now it takes me some time to recover after one party.

So, for now, I am a ghost. My inner part animal is lying dormant for a while. I would have liked to go to Oppikoppi to go all out before I “hibernate”, to get all the party cravings out of me, to get completely fucked up on alcohol and generally anything I could get my hands on one last time and spend time with my friends. These last few weekends at home have been rough.

I’m still itching to get out there and to spend my money on cheap drinks and cheap drunks and wake up the next morning feeling like shit. Knowing, even though I can’t remember much that I felt alive with people I love – it’s like an addiction, a habit. When the weekend comes your way you’re already going through social networks looking for an event or phoning your friends to hear what the plan of action is for the weekend so that you can plan accordingly.

The worst part of staying at home for me is the FOMO. The thought that I’m sitting at home on my own watching Futurama while my friends, acquaintances and the world is out there having the time of their lives. I hate that feeling because what I really never ever want to say when I’m old, sitting on the porch, yelling at the neighbourhood kids to get off my lawn while waiting for the Viagra to kick in is “I wish I partied harder. I wish I spent more time with my friends. I wish I caused more shit and got into more trouble”. Because who knows, maybe that one night I decide to stay home rather than go out I miss the opportunity to bump into my future ex-wife.

Like Hank Moody said in Californication in a letter to Karen, “It’s a big bad world full of twists and turns and people have a way of blinking and missing the moment. The moment that could have changed everything.”