Always follow the rules (Photo nicked from sibling dodgy phone photography ltd)
Rules. Without ’em, you can’t hope to have fun. Well, that’s not strictly true of course. Plenty of people have had fun without rules before. But I’m not one of them. I like rules for the solidity they provide me as well as the sense that everything I’m doing isn’t simply part of a random selection of events and sequences that will ultimately culminate in a broadly pointless existence that I’ll be sitting at home when I’m 50 contemplating and going “where did it all go wrong” (breathes).
Anyway, when it comes to the 30 coffees project I thought that it could benefit from the introduction of a few rules that would help allow the whole thing to have a jazz like structure, deriving free form awesomeness from the few set boundaries that I give it. After a long period of agonised mulling (5 minutes on the sofa in between a GTA 5 sticky bomb rampage), I came up with the following guidelines that’ll help keep the whole (mis)adventure cooler than Miles Davies in an ice box.
1) Categorise anything that moves
EVERYTHING MUST BE ORDERED PERFECTLY
When studying my list of the good, the bad and the oh so handsome, it struck me that everyone could be loosely shepherded into a few broad categories that would help me divide my experiences up in a way that’ll appeal to the OCD amongst us. Ergo, every person who takes part will be branded in my brain and on the internet as one of the following:
- A Friend Indeed – Someone who I actually know and who, when I meet them from coffee, is only slightly likely to recoil in absolute horror.
- The Professionals– Someone who I mostly know from their serious(ish) and professional lifestyles. Conversation likely to involve words such as “metrics” and “engagement”
- Stranger Danger – Someone who has approached me from the internet to take part in the project and who could potentially be The Truth Terrorist from The Bridge. Or just nice. I’m not sure.
Beyond that, there will also be a sub category for the few people who I don’t get a chance to meet in person. They will be ordained as taker parters in The Skype Sessions, named in a way to trick my brain into thinking I’m like a 1960s beat poet rather than a dead beat writer in the Noughties talking to people miles away in my bedroom. Sob.
2) Make your introductions
You either know what is going on here or you don’t
Rather than throwing people head first into my meetings with random people like a person dropped into season 4 of the Wire without any pass notes, I’m going to make sure that I introduce every single person who takes part in the project in a way that will be interesting, informative and possibly funny (no promises though) to help you get into the thing.
Each post will therefore be packed with the following information so that you can check out each package like a virtual shopper and either click or ignore depending on your level of spitefulness:
- “The (insert word)” title – a title that provides an at a glance summary of who I’m talking to/my relationship to them
- The all important details – so that’ll be name, occupation, drink choice and favourite member of the Beatles (Ringo Starr being the wrong answer, of course)
- The italicised prologue – a short paragraph or deux about that person to act like a sturdy shoe horn to ease your foot of interest into the sole of the article.
The first post of this will be a little prologue featuring me talking to myself. It’s going to be sad and lonely, that’s for sure.
3) Having the time of their life
Most importantly of all, the people involved are going to have to have fun. Sure they’re going to be imparting wisdom, either by gently massaging it into my head or sledgehammering my face in with it, but we can all have fun while going onto the route of wisdom? That’s exactly what Buddha said after all (he didn’t) so I’ll be making sure that each coffee is more fun than watching a bear roll down a children’s slide (not very hard to do, based on my experience). Nice of me, isn’t it?
And with that, my rules of engagement are laid out. The George prologue will be coming out soon and I might get around to whacking this on Facebook and Twitter at some point soon as I’m a narcissistic egotist. So until next time goodbye and remember – you don’t have fun without rules. Most of the time.
The 30 Coffees Project 