#79 Join a bookclub

This is something I've wanted to do for a long, long time. Ideally I'd make my own bookclub group with some of my close friends. Unfortunately not all of my friends here in San Diego share my absolute love of reading, and those that do are busy with school, life, and other commitments.

I had started hearing a lot of good things about www.meetup.com as a means of finding other people who share your interests. So I went on and found a book club that appealed to me. It had a lot of different meetings to meet everyone's schedules. The books that were chosen were varied so you were bound to find something that interested you. And best of all it was just for women. I had signed up for two prior meetups with this book club over the last several months, but they just never worked out with my schedule. Now that I'm no longer working though I decided to go for it.

I signed up for a day time meeting to discuss "A Wrinkle in Time" at a local restaurant. I had never read the book, and while it wasn't my most favorite read ever it was good. The easy part was done. The part that took a whole lot of effort was stepping outside my comfort zone to go to a restaurant and meet a bunch of strangers to have lunch and discuss this book. Even while getting ready I dealt with the strange mix of excitement and nerves. It was tempting to not go. But that would have been the easy thing to do. However, life isn't all about easy and sometimes you really do just have to force yourself to try new things, to meet new people, and to do things that make you feel a little uncomfortable. In my mind these truly are the experiences that help us to grow.

Overall the meeting went well. I got there a few minutes early and chatted with a few of the girls while we waited for the others to be seated. For me that was probably the best part as far as conversation went. Once we were seated it was actually a bit overwhelming. They had never met as a group at that restaurant and normally most places provide them with a secluded area for the meeting. Not at this place. It was crowded with the brunch rush and we were right smack dab in the middle of it. By nature I'm not a loud person so I kind of just took a step back, tried to enjoy my food (which didn't taste as good as I'd hoped, and was late to come out), and mostly listened in on the discussion.

Would I attend another meetup? Absolutely. The "daytime" book doesn't really appeal to me so I'll probably sit out that meeting. But I do plan on attending again very soon.