So, I’ve started my project to get to know my networks! Slowly but surely, but the most important part of any project is actually beginning. I think I’m going to call it Project NYE for short. I hope to get greater momentum going in the next few days, since I am sure that it’s going to be harder to reach out to everyone when I’m engrossed in my SOUTHEAST ASIAN EXTRAVAGANZA – 5 months of traveling starting in mid February….

Both people that I’ve spoken to are friends from my Facebook community.

One is a girl that I haven’t spoken to in years, since middle school, actually. I’m always intrigued by her own interesting series of posts, travels, and general bad-ass optimism and feminist qualities of independence, that is to say that her life (and newsfeed) are never overrun with “coupled” activities, of which I find many girls falling into that pattern of co-dependence. And I’m from New Jersey, the most bad-ass fucking place of them all! Like other people from the state, we imagine that the most important places in the US consists of the frigid North East, Florida (read: Miami, also note that I personally hate Miami), and the state of California; whereas all of the landlocked places of the US consists of severe weather shifts, serious issues involving guns, teen-moms-ville, and Republicans… So, yeah, if there aren’t strong independent women in this part of the country, then where are they? If not us, who? If not now, when?

Forgive the tangent! Anyway, she is doing great, and now that the ice is broken, I can see myself talking with her more in the future. Whether that amounts to meeting up, I can’t really say for sure, but I feel incredibly great for opening the door to our communication.

And now a turn towards the more serious. Another contact reached out to me, a person several years older than myself, an acquaintance from a former country. Trying to keep their identifying details confidential, this person confessed to me that over the holidays they returned to the US and went for a battery of tests with their physician, and testing positive in 50% of them for a certain type of cancer. To say that this caught me off guard is a gross understatement. When I say that this person is an acquaintance, it’s true – we’ve only talked online or on the phone and have never met, we are certainly not best buddies, and yet… I have a hard time describing exactly what I felt during our conversation. At one point, hearing their perspective, concerns, and anxiety for making a full recovery, I caught my own throat tightening up and feeling as much sympathy as I could for this person’s situation. The lighter side of the news being that the likelihood of inoperability is very low, a single-digit percentage; but when it comes to life, death, or health, even something as trivial as 1% sounds like something risky to me.

We talked for a little while, as this person is back from abroad pursuing treatment with doctors in the US, and seeing family. I’m no doctor, of course, so every bit of advice pertaining to what they should or shouldn’t do, I precluded with this disclaimer, or emphasizing it with “in my opinion”. But what I do know is that it’s important for my friend to stay positive, to believe that things will work just fine, and to make every effort to live as healthy of a life as possible right now, pertaining to stress, diet, and other lifestyle habits. I’m not a religious person – far from it, in fact – but this person asked me to pray for them. Since I have no deity to ask, I will keep this person in my thoughts in my own way, and believe in the powers and miracles of medicine.

These stories only reflect the tellings of two people in my network so far, and I’ve got roughly 1300 more to go… Their stories are powerful and have moved me. And while I thought that in the best case scenario I would hear back from a couple of people, with mostly positive things going on in their lives, I am kind of amazed at how I feel much closer to the second person in this example. I am flattered that they let me into their world and confided in me about this personal matter, and I hope that, at the very least, I was able to make this person feel a little bit better, a little more cared for.

And when I hit a wall in the future, I’ll make sure to come back to this post to remind myself how good it feels to reach out to people personally, to be there for them in their proudest moments and even more importantly, to be there for them in their worst.

And honestly… one of the reasons I’ve hesitated with this project is that I’ve been worried about coming across “fair weather” friends, the “yes men” friends, the people that are friendly with you when all is well and when it’s convenient, but slip out the back door when hard times come (and they always come). Fair weather friends, not to be confused with long distance friendships, since I’ve managed to hold my ground with many friends around the world, even when we seldom talk or don’t see each other for years. Character is consistent. But now, I feel confident in separating the wheat from the chaff, the real from the opportunists. I’ll move forward with my project, with occasional updates for myself and the blogosphere, along with getting more involved with my other passions, almost all of which are somehow combined with travel!

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments, and ta-ta for now!