I have a confession to make: I would have gotten this column done much earlier, but I got caught up in a meeting. Actually, I was slowed down by several meetings I got roped into attending this week … and last week … and so on and so on.

So many meetings! It’s so draining! Something needs to be done about it! But … I’m afraid to bring it up, because you know what will happen? The folks in charge will decide the best course of action, the best way to fix it, is to get together and brainstorm options. Yeah, a meeting about limiting meetings – the irony would be too thick to bear.

Meetings – they feel utterly inescapable. And it’s not just at work. We have meetings for everything – team meetings for sports, neighborhood meetings to address barking dogs and board meetings to discuss ways to properly govern everything from schools to cemeteries to fairs to laws. And even if you manage to duck all those meetings, they manage to infiltrate the home – family meeting, anyone?

Shoot, even when the world shuts down, meetings find a way to survive. When COVID hit, I saw one advantage, one good thing about everybody sheltering in their homes and public venues shutting down for the immediate future – no more meetings! But I was wrong, so very wrong. The pull to continue meetings was too powerful. This was one cockroach you couldn’t kill. Nope. Along came virtual meetings! Let us introduce Zoom and Teams! A global pandemic didn’t put an end to meetings, it somehow made them MORE common. Now that COVID is over, we have all the same in-person gathering mixed with a new batch of virtual sessions.

Now, the folks in charge, the ones scheduling all these new-fangled virtual meetings, will tell you this is a great thing, a new and more efficient way to communicate in the 21st Century. But we all know better. Sure, you can stay home and attend a meeting from the comfort of your sofa, but you better make sure you dress appropriately, lest a co-worker inadvertently find out what color underwear you’re wearing. You better be tech savvy and know how to shut off the camera or the video filters. Otherwise, you might end up on YouTube because you took your laptop to the bathroom and broadcast your potty break to all your colleagues. Or you might find yourself explaining to your fellow professionals that you are not actually a cat, which is what one poor attorney had to do after someone left a cat face filter linked to his computer camera.

Meetings have become so pervasive in our society that we attend events that we don’t even realize are meetings until it’s too late. Perhaps sensing meeting burnout, different organizations have hoodwinked us with new names, new labels to disguise and deflect attention. Ever been to a retreat? How about a conference? They sound pleasant enough, like a work-sanctioned vacation, but if you really stop and evaluate the situation, you will realize you are still gathering in a group, still discussing topics and all of it is scheduled and structured. They’re meetings!

It doesn’t end there. Group leaders have hijacked your yearning for the good old days, taking advantage of your emotionally charged nostalgia, hosting events that may seem like fun and games but are really just meetings in disguise. Have you ever attended a family reunion? What about a high school reunion? Don’t they sound quaint? Sure … until you realize you’re gathering in a specific place at a specific time with a group of peers. Deny it all you want, but they’re all meetings!

Heck, even parties are suspect. We still have to show up at a certain time, at a certain place and participate in group activities. And just to make sure nobody figures out that a party is just a meeting posing as a good time, they have come up with a bunch of names for them. What exactly is a shindig? How exactly does a hootenanny differ from a soiree?

And let’s face it folks, even a date is a meeting – just smaller-scale and with one primary goal in mind.

Now, before you call me jaded or accuse me of throwing all the baby meetings out with the meeting bathwater, I will admit that it’s not all bad. There are some benefits to meetings – and perhaps the greatest of these benefits is it always gives you a baked-in excuse for getting out of things. Someone wants help moving? … Sorry, I have a meeting that day. Hey, you have a phone call … Sorry. Meeting. My leg is caught in a bear trap! … Sorry, my leg is caught in this meeting.

Well, I better call it good on this column. Seems I have to attend – you guessed it – another meeting. I can hardly wait.