Aaron's Status

February 1, 2025

7:54 am

Well, it’s February, and I have no friends?

That’s an exaggeration, but, I can’t help but feel like I could have a more vibrant social sphere. This is not the first time the thought has crossed my mind, but what am I going to do about it?

Obviously $WIFE is obsessed with climbing and often gets together with her climbing friends. I also have climbing friends and I hope to be able to organize more climbing hangs, and I’m sure that will happen.

Today, she’s off to Providence to do this yoga + sauna thing all day with her sister-in-law and her best friend (who is also my main “belay buddy”). This got me thinking: I have two brother-in-laws and they never want to do things with me. I have two close friends from high school days but one lives three hours away and is basically a full-time recluse, and the other has plenty to do in his own life and seldom wants to do more than go to dinner.

Now I’m of two minds: first, obviously I can be the planner and instigator. This has to be part of my strategy, to offer and suggest things and see who takes me up on it. Maybe something develops from that.

Second, I’m just annoyed that basically none of the men in my life ever want to do anything? Well, with me, anyway. I know that one dude definitely does a lot of stuff constantly but he’s the “social butterfly” of my friend group and quite honestly a lot of what they get up to sounds exhausting. He’s a fair bit younger than me, and childless, so it’s a different vibe.

Sounds like it’s time to plan some shit.

•••

The past few days have gotten me once again playing with the idea of having a Teenage Engineering OP-1. I’m not sure if they’re making them anymore since they have released the “OP-1 Field,” but they can still be found. Now, there’s absolutely no way I’m going to drop $2k on this thing, but you can find plenty of them used.

Even used ones are $600 to $900, so, not a trivial cost for sure. But I’ve always wanted one. I think it’s inevitable that I’ll buy one eventually. The criticisms that the thing attracts seem to be centered around two things:

  1. It’s unintuitive and complicated (I find this to be cool)
  2. It’s a very limited DAW

Of course a great many people love it, but I think the criticism arises mostly from people with music production experience who are comparing it to other things. I have basically no experience so I feel like I could enjoy it in a more pure way, for what it is, without having hang-ups based on other tools.

Anyway there’s one on Facebook Marketplace right now and I kind of want to buy it.