On Friendship and The Internet

Rob and I are flying to Boston tonight. We're spending Friday exploring and Saturday at my dear friend Jenna's house, where she and I will see each other in person for only the fifth time.

I had plenty of friends as a teenager because I went to a small Catholic school and there were sixty people in my class. Everyone knew each other, and even if you weren't friends you still were kind of friends because you had the fact that you were both there in common. I was one of those young women who make me cringe now--the ones who say that they "just don't get along with other girls." In my defense, I had an incredibly tight group of female cross country teammates who are still my best friends today, but because we were spread out among three different years, I never felt like I had that circle of best girlfriends with whom I would graduate.

I made friends in college and lived in an apartment with three women who felt like family. But once we graduated and I started moving around a bit, I realized how hard it was to make connections with people unless we were in a classroom together. Working helped, but then I started making the transition to working from home and it got difficult again.

In December of 2011, I found myself in Washington, DC, deep into the small talk of a cocktail party full of people I didn't know. It was my first blogger event and I surprised myself by first purchasing a ticket in advance and then driving two and a half hours to be there. I figured I would make some friends who had blogging in common, and I really did--just a few years later, Jenna was one of three of those cocktail party strangers standing behind me in a bridesmaid dress as I married my husband.

Being connected by our blogs and Instagram accounts and just having the Internet in general is something that I might have been uneasy with in some other life. But we live in a world where my best friend from Minneapolis is a wonderful person who I never would have met without an email from her telling me that she moved here from far away once too, and she knows what it's like to be in a new city and not know a soul. Friendship today is so limitless--both old and new ones are strengthened every day. And for that I am so grateful.