I have disparate groups of friends from different areas of my life and historically, I’ve kept them in silos with very little interaction between the different groups. In an attempt to create a more cohesive group of friends, I came up with a concept called “Geremy’s Peculiar Outing.”
With each Peculiar Outing, I send emails to 4-8 of my friends to invite them to hang out with a few other people, but I make sure to omit the names of the other invitees. A key caveat of the outing is that no one is allowed to mention it to anyone else and they cannot prod to find out the names of the other potential attendees. By keeping the names of the participants private, I am able to gather friends from different social circles together to have a fun outing and potentially forge new friendships.
Thus far, I’ve arranged a few outings, including a NYC Bike Tour Extravaganza and a visit to the Schmorgasburg food festival and they have gone swimmingly without any bloodshed. With such a positive response to the idea, I have plans of conducting many more of these outings in the new year. So if you receive an email from me with an invitation to an outing, don’t be surprised if you are joined by Ms. Pipkin (my kindergarten teacher from Paterson School 10), Dwight (the kid who beat me up in 3rd grade for cutting him in line), Handiman (the one-armed guy who dries my car at the car wash), and Thomas Jefferson (our family guinea pig).