I was meeting some friends at a bar.
I met some friends at a bar.
was meeting – past continuous
met – simple past
In my opinion, I prefer to use the latter sentence because I don't normally hear people say was meeting.
In the sentence: "He met a lot of friendly people while he was working in Chicago."
I can't use the words "was meeting" because he couldn't do both actions at the same time (simultaneously).
However, I am still confused. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Best Answer
As is very often the case with tenses in English, both are possible, depending on how you are choosing to view the temporal structure of the events, rather than on an objective difference in the events.
If you use I was meeting, it suggests that you are choosing to view the meeting as a continuing process, probably because you are then going to relate something that happened during the process, eg I was meeting some friends at a bar, when I remembered something.
Another possible meaning for this is something like "I was intending to, or had arranged to, meet some friends at a bar"