I'm not a big fan of just blindly joining things, so when my dancers/dancing friends started telling me I "had" to get a Facebook account, I thought, "Uh huh". I don't need to make a bunch of internet "friends" (I have my Knitty-buddies for that!) with 20-something jock guys looking to "cyber". Yuck. However, I will admit that I was mistaken. Turns out many, many of the people I have known over the years, including a great number from my undergraduate programme, are on Facebook. And now I'm reconnecting with them! It's wonderful, really, to be back in touch with dear, old friends, people with whom I had lost touch, people who, due their careers and academic pursuits have moved far from home, often several times, thus making it difficult to find contact information for them. I am finally in contact with a friend in Wales, a friend in BC who has become a world-class journalist, a friend from Girl Guides and dancing who used to live down my street when we were young, and undergrad classmates who - when last I saw them - were dating fellow classmates but are now engaged to one another.
It feels strange to me to think of the internet as such a blessing; perhaps I'm a bit of a luddite. But I'm finding my friends!! I can't tell you how thrilled I am to send them messages, and see recent pictures of them, see where they're working and read what's new in their lives. I've been feeling a little lonely for the last few years. I love my husband, and his friends are also my friends - now - but the friends I made for myself, people with whom I had interests and passions in common, people I knew years before I even met my husband and his friends...I've missed them terribly. So many of them have had a profound effect on who I am, and how I think. So many of them are absolutely brilliant! And after the relative repression of high school (because how many people truly feel encouraged to their full potential during high school, the pressure to fit in is so strong) having these friends sparked in me the ability to be my true self, a fully actualised form of Me.
Retrieving these friends is rather like finding a little part of myself. I can't tell you how happy I am!
It feels strange to me to think of the internet as such a blessing; perhaps I'm a bit of a luddite. But I'm finding my friends!! I can't tell you how thrilled I am to send them messages, and see recent pictures of them, see where they're working and read what's new in their lives. I've been feeling a little lonely for the last few years. I love my husband, and his friends are also my friends - now - but the friends I made for myself, people with whom I had interests and passions in common, people I knew years before I even met my husband and his friends...I've missed them terribly. So many of them have had a profound effect on who I am, and how I think. So many of them are absolutely brilliant! And after the relative repression of high school (because how many people truly feel encouraged to their full potential during high school, the pressure to fit in is so strong) having these friends sparked in me the ability to be my true self, a fully actualised form of Me.
Retrieving these friends is rather like finding a little part of myself. I can't tell you how happy I am!
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