I don't usually celebrate my birthday much. I think the last 'big' birthday I celebrated was my 10 years. After that, I guess I thought I had grown out of celebrating birthdays, and that needing to celebrate them every year was an immature, insecure baby move. I was a serious, grown person by 10, I figured, so I had no need for all that attention on me every year from then on. :D
But it just so happened that I decided that 35 might be an excuse enough to throw the most random-ass birthday party ever, by inviting 3 different friend groups (my fam/gamer gang + my uni time girls + my now ex-colleagues). Mixing friend groups was something I was repeatedly cautioned against doing, but to be able to observe how they would or wouldn't mix was part of the allure for me. An evil social experiment if you will. xD
It was an absolute delight to see everyone. But it did feel as if I barely saw everyone, since I'm always more of a one-on-one kind of person, and quality time spent with each is how I feel connected with people. It did get overwhelming, especially at the beginning, as everyone arrived at around the same time. My social anxiety did manage to kick in.. even though they are MY friends. :D It do be weird like that sometimes.
It was crucial for me though that people feel free to socialize or not socialize as much as they felt comfortable, so I was absolutely against the idea of forcing people to do some kind of mandatory activities, as those have never felt ok with me in other events I've been to. I wanted more of a free-flowing summer games kind of vibe, where activities are available and people have a free choice of what they like to participate in.
I did ask people to introduce themselves at the start, just so that everyone has at least a rough idea of who is who, and asked to contribute to a cocreation of a painting at their own convenience during the evening, but that's about as much of my dictatorial powers that I used. Since the decoration and the dress code theme were tropics inspired, I did laugh at one point that this was, in fact, Tropico, and I'm el presidente, the dictator for the evening.
Hats off to brother and sister who were running constantly to make sure everything is sorted and everyone has everything they needed, they were invaluable help and made sure I did not have to worry about anything.
Me and mom did go overboard with the food, but it dawned upon us that we might in fact have delusions of grandeur only by the time we tried to find spot for everything on the tables. No one had the guts to check in with us earlier to see if we really needed THAT much food. But in our defense, we only wanted to make sure that everyone got enough to eat.
We did throw some of our ideas out at the end when we realized there really WAS too much food, but even that did not save us from still being stuffed to the brim two days after the fact, trying to eat as much as we can to not let the food go to waste. I think we'll at least attempt to be more mindful in future endeavors, but, honestly, no promises. :D
All in all I do hope that people did manage to enjoy themselves because I, for one, had an absolute blast. ^^
~Josie~
I'll make a separate DIY post about the Sandbag Toss Game that I specifically made for the event later on.