I had a great conversation with a friend about saying ‘yes’ a few weeks ago. I’m not talking about ‘yes’ to a specific person for something, I’m talking about ‘yes’ to an experience – be it a good time, or an experience that scares you.

If you were to take an improv class, they would teach you to say yes. If an actor says to you “here, hold my pineapple,” your response would be “sure, but this isn’t a pineapple it’s a bowl of sea urchins.” Or something like that. When you say no, you stop the action. You stop the flow. In my opinion, you stop the awesome.

Some of the best nights/experiences of my life came from moments of ‘yes’. Be at the back door of the Cameron House in 15 minutes to see Feist perform a light and puppet show – YES.

I bring this up because it’s another tactic to meet interested and like minded people in a new city. I am lucky to have lindy hop, cabaret and classic music as hobbies (sometimes they are more all consuming than a normal hobby, but you know what I mean). These activities give me instant community. You still need to work at it and work at your friendships, as I previously mentioned, but it definitely makes the quest for great people easier.

I know the lure of your couch is tempting. All I’m saying is, it’s better to regret the things you’ve done then the ones you didn’t. Or to put it differently, it’s better to sneak into that abandoned building to hear an amazing band play then to sit at home and watch CSI.

Looking for new hobbies in London? Timeout obviously helps you there and did you know that they keep those new year’s resolution guides up for most of the year?! You can find all sorts of fun stuff there. Here’s my obligatory shout out for swing dancing and lindy hop – I rarely have a bad night dancing and have met incredible people all over the world. I highly recommend it. I’ll go on about this another time, but there is my plug.

And a little Tegan and Sara for you on a Friday…