Tag: Friendship

Being Grateful and Getting Personal

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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!

You Get What You Give

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Ok, so I don’t have any news to report on the progress of my New Year’s Resolution (unfortunately, one of my resolutions has never been about procrastination!). BUT, I have started to cultivate new friendships, online and offline, and I’m pleasantly pleased with the potential for each of them. Even though I haven’t pressed into my current social media friends or connections, at the end of the day, the point of this is to come away with more quality friends after all, isn’t it?

Online, I’ve interacted with my local community in a dedicated Facebook group, asking questions and answering questions, especially when it fell into my expertise of travel, and even more into my niche of all-inclusive travel in Mexico and the Caribbean. I didn’t live there for nothin’!

Also, as the days tick closer to my Asian Extravaganza (arriving in Singapore just in time for the Chinese New Year!), I have been looking for some people to host me on Couchsurfing, and it is so heartwarming to be welcomed into a stranger’s house, for no reason other than an act of kindness and good will. Well, actually, the dark side is that there are some creepers whom I’ve connected with, and our conversation part deux begins with “so why don’t you have anymore pics on your profile?” -.-  I’m not really interested in those kinds of meet ups.

OH! And also, a friend of a friend of my sister is offering to host me in Singy for my few days in town whilst I acclimate… offering me my own separate guest room and bathroom… an iMac (!!!)… and even a driver to pick me up at the airport in the middle of the night, after crossing half the world and traveling forward in time one, no, two days! She also seems like a lovely lady who will adventure around the island with me and be my lunch date, at least. So, *I* feel like THIS:

Now, offline is where things are a bit more interesting.

And again I have to credit the Couchsurfing community, since I’ll be meeting a bunch of them starting in just about six weeks.

The other day, I went to the library to relax and read through some of my SE Asia guidebooks–sometimes I like the patine of turning pages. After about an hour, someone tapped me on the shoulder from a neighboring table and asked me if I was, indeed going to Thailand? I smiled and said yes, whereby she told me that I am going to LOVE it! I mentioned I had been there for a couple of days, and we swapped some travel stories – and I’m realizing more and more that the secret keyword that not many people know of IS, in fact, “travel” (seriously, try using it as an icebreaker and see how far it goes). She was one half of a lovely older, retired couple that has visited about 40 countries (and counting), including some more extended tours into Asia, which is really a region that I am more passionate about, more on that in other postings. We exchanged e-mails and I told her that I hope to keep in touch.

Still, I met another person I’m interested in getting to know this week, while setting up an international, fee-free ATM card (yes, such a miracle exists, check it out at Charles Schwab). Something I really should have done YEARS ago to be totally honest. We met coincidentally, and I found out she is fairly new to the area and looking to make friends, and has quite an interesting history of travel and emigration herself. I love it and am looking forward to befriending a fellow nomad in this world, where sincerity and integrity are the stuff that long-lasting, long-distance friendships are made of.

And last, but certainly not least, I am elated that “Tales of a Female Nomad” author Rita Golden Gelman wrote back to me, in just under 24 hours, to my fan letter thanking her for publishing such a beautiful memoir. I would wager that if you enjoyed reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, this one would easily please you just as much. (Let me make a quick book review aside here, I find that Tales of a Female Nomad is more episodic, in that she catalogues her visits and experiences across several different countries, achieving something new in each country. While Eat, Pray, Love, does this as well, I think of that particular memoir as more of a three act play in how it is sewn together. Both were phenomenal and worth a read, in my opinion).

The point being – no, I haven’t advanced on what I’ve promised so far regarding reaching out to Facebook and LinkedIn people (yet), but yes, I have been cultivating more friendships as I move along. 

The Resolution Worth Keeping

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Ping! The familiar notification from Facebook Messenger alerted me to a new message, a simple “Happy New Year!” from a friend in Mauritius, whom I’d met incidentally on a trip to Japan more than two years ago.

We haven’t seen each other since we met, and yet we’ve managed somehow to stay in touch and stay current with each other’s life events. And then it hit me all at once, what I should really resolve to do this year that would be meaningful to me and different from the last years’ half-hearted declarations. I even made a (rather witty, in my opinion) Facebook post about it! And I certainly don’t think I need any bad karma or credibility issues from the all-knowing, all-seeing internet Gods, so here it is: what if, instead of just beefing up my personal network and brand via social media, I took all of my “friends”, “followers”, and “contacts”, and actually built a real, personal, relationship with each of them, or at the very least attempted to?

In other words: Hi, I’m Julie and I like warm hugs!

I realize I’m the one who’s going to have to seduce my friends to, you know, talk to me… And while it’s a small gesture, I think it’s a pretty decent goal. A S.M.A.R.T goal if you will (that’s Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely – said every modern business book ever). So here’s the fine print.

  • Who’s involved? For now, I am targeting my Facebook buddies, LinkedIn contacts AND OF COURSE, EVERYONE WHO CORRESPONDS WITH ME HERE ON MY BLOG! since these networks involve direct relationships and identities, as opposed to Twitter and Instagram, which focus mostly on producing content and material.
  • What am I talking about? Transform social media friends into social media friends. And since we don’t live in a world of rainbows and lollipops (although that sounds delicious), it may ultimately lead to–nay, it SHOULD lead to–cutting out some dead weight in my life. You know the types. And believe me so do I–should make for interesting fodder for later…
  • Where? On the Internetz. Or should a live opportunity present itself, I wouldn’t say no to seeing an old friend.
  • When? 364 days remaining, or a churn of 3.7 people per day. If this little experiment works out, maybe it’s something that I could carry over on a rolling basis.
  • How? Let the message fit the medium–a quick, personalized note if ever and whenever possible, informing the recipient of my project and with some fun questions to get the conversation rolling. “Fun” is rather subjective, but I think I will omit such goodies like what is your favorite sexual position… for now. 
  • Why? Because this.

Also, I’m sick of creeping on your profile in private! Let me in, or let me out. I’m sure there’s much more to you than 142.3 GB worth of media of your children spitting up/hitting each other/pissing off the family dog. I bet you’re a far better person than all of your shared pop quizzes and personality assessments would otherwise indicate. You are more than the sum of your buzzfeed parts.

And, like the protagonist of this video, I think my life would be better with better friendships. It’s important to remember that it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. In keeping this resolution, I will consider myself successful it it produces even one stronger friendship than before, or removes (or heals!) even one toxic connection from my past.

Any advice for me?