Making Connections, (Not) Making Friends

Recently, a friend invited me out to dinner with her SAHM group. I'm not a mom, let alone a stay-at-home one, but my social life has been a little lacking lately and since it's always nice to meet new people and my friend's heart was in the right place, I decided to tag along. The fact that the dinner was at The Melting Pot on Ladies Night had something to do with it as well. There's just something about The Melting Pot that I love. Maybe because I'm a snacker and I love the little pieces of food and dipping the little pieces into different flavors... I'm not sure. But the mix of tastes, scrumptious martinis, reduced cost, and the relaxed experience itself makes Ladies Night worthwhile.

Which is how I found myself: childless, near 40 and single, sharing a fondue pot with four (much younger) mom's and one pregnant woman. Which, if you've ever been to The Melting Pot, you know is kind of an intimate experience to have with people you don't know. Eating food essentially out of the same pot- there's something familial and tribal about that. It's something we don't often experience with our families, let alone strangers, in our hurried lives. Smalltalk ensued, something I'm not a great fan of in the first place. The conversation turned to where we had all come from, and how we all ended up in Grand Rapids, or in some cases, back in Grand Rapids. I explained to one of the moms that although I had been in Grand Rapids for 12 years and have a lot of friends, I don't have a lot of people to spend time with. She agreed and said she was in a similar situation. "It can be hard to meet people," I said, "Once you get to-"

"No," she cut in. "It's different when you have kids." 

Oh. I didn't know this was going to be one of those things I "don't understand" because I don't have kids. Someone forgot to let me in on the secret of how to meet people as a single adult with no kids. I'm sure it's not easy being a SAHM without a lot of friends. I don't dispute that. I just don't think it's easy being anyone without at least a few like-minded adults to spend time with on a regular basis. At least if you're married you have a spouse to talk to sometimes. Single people don't talk to their cats because they're crazy. They talk to their cats so they don't go crazy! 

When we're growing up, potential friends are all around us- in our neighborhood, at school, at church, sports, etc... Once we get past high school and college, it can be rough to meet new people, let alone make new friends. And maintaining old friendships isn't always easy, either. Our modern society is transitory. People often don't remain in their hometowns, near family and friends. Technology helps us keep in touch but it sure is nice to sit across from a real live person at the coffee shop sometimes instead of a laptop. To compound matters, I've noticed that many people react with suspicion and even sometimes resentment when a stranger or casual acquaintance reaches out to them. I've been guilty of this myself. We need to remember to leave ourselves open to new friendships because we never know who is out there waiting for us. 

I felt verbally chastised by the woman who spoke the above words to me. I'm sure she didn't mean to offend, she seemed like a nice person. There was no malice in her tone. But with her words, a wall went up between us. It was clear that she had, rather quickly and with virtually no real information about me, discarded the idea that I may be of some value to her socially or emotionally. I wasn't enough like her. Some of my closest friends, at first glance, don't seem to be much like me. But sometimes it's the differences between friends that prove their value and provide much needed perspective into situations in our own lives. 

Our friends don't have to be just like us, any more than do the people we do business with. Any good businessperson can expound on the importance of networking. Well, sometimes networking is useful not just in the workplace, but in our emotional lives as well. And that includes all of us. Not just stay at home moms. I'm glad I went to dinner though, even though I didn't meet a new best friend. It was eye-opening, no one at the table meowed in response to any of my comments, and the fondue was great- especially the chocolate! 


  

Friendship, Slacking and a Gleek Retreat '11 Recap

Although I freely admit to being a slacker about things like cleaning out my fridge, weeding, and returning library books, I'm usually not a slacker about things I like to do, like writing in my blog. Lately, however, my life has been a whirlwind and I've been keeping up with most of it ok but my bog has suffered terribly in the face of a temporary job, applying and interviewing for permanent jobs, finishing (finally!) my degree, starting a volunteer job, trying to keep up with various yard and house projects, all while still feeding myself and the cats and keeping up with various friends and, of course, my life in social media!

This last weekend I attended the Gleek Retreat '11 with a bunch of amazing women bloggers from the West Michigan and the surrounding areas, and I decided I simply had to write a post about how much I enjoyed meeting everyone and how great all the speakers were! Not only was it great to be able to put faces to the twitter handles, I also learned a lot from all the presenters. Thanks to Katie, from Kitchen Stewardship, I might even try writing an eBook when my schedule calms down a little! Look for a review of her awesome eBook Healthy Snacks To Go coming up in the next week or so since she was nice enough to give me a review copy. I just glanced through it quickly and there are a few recipes I am dying to try!

I also wanted to take a few minutes to thank and talk about the wonderful sponsors of the Gleek Retreat:

Unfortunately I didn't get time to take advantage of a free facial from Therapon Skin Health while at the retreat, but I can't wait to try the samples that were included in our swag bags. Everyone who has tried them has been raving about them on Twitter!

We each received two full-size bottles of carpet and upholstery cleaner and a coupon for a free Big Green Machine rental from Bissell.

Mabel's Labels provided the bags our swag came in, as well as two adorable Bag Tags for each attendee with our blog names.

Island Girl Bags gave us each a purse-sized Kleenex holder or key fob in our bags in fun patterns. I got a Kleenex holder and it has found a happy home in my purse. Being a bag addict, I've been drooling over their website and thinking of hosting a trunk show sometime soon!

Everyone loves candy and Rudy Kazoody's, Specialty Candies and Gift Baskets of Rockford, tucked little goodie packets into our swag bags. Mine had the cutest little package of Haribo gummy bears in it I've ever seen! How cute are their Retro Baskets!

Roger's Jewelers provided a jewelry polishing cloth, something I desperately needed!

So far my favorite item from the swag bag was from Good Life Granola. This is the best granola I've ever had, hands down! It's positively addictive! Luckily it's made in Holland, MI and a lot of places around Grand Rapids carry it so I'll be able to get more with no trouble. It is available online if you don't live within driving distance of one of the retailers. I highly recommend you try it if you like granola- or even if you don't, it's that good!

Other thanks go out to Julie at Dutch Being Me for planning the retreat. I know how much work goes into pulling off an event like this and she did an amazing job! Haworth Inn and Conference Center in downtown Holland gave us a great deal on our rooms and they were lovely! They took great care of us all weekend with good food, a nice space and lots of coffee! We took a dinner cruise out onto Lake Macatawa on the Holland Princess and it was a good time although sadly I missed the on-board karaoke.   And last but certainly not least, I won my ticket to the retreat from Blog Conference Newbie along with a snack pack and keychain from Words to Sweat By and a pack of 100 beautiful business cards from tinyprints that I received tons of compliments on!

Even though it was all fun and educational, by far my favorite part of the weekend was the opportunity to catch up with my friend Stacy from My Life of What Ifs. We were friends in high school and in college and have kept in touch over the years but it has been a decade since we'd seen each other in person to talk and catch up. As with all truly great friendships, the years melted away within minutes and if we didn't get all the way caught up, it sure wasn't for lack of trying! Stacy is the one who inspired me to start blogging again and she has always been one of my favorite people. She is more amazing than she knows and I've always admired her and her perspective on life. Even though we stayed up too late talking, the time I spent with her was a true gift and hopefully another 10 years won't go by before we can do it again. 

Once thing I can tell you for sure is that it won't be another month before you see another new post from me! 

Posters on my Wall: A Liberal's Agenda on Facebook

I'm a liberal and I have an agenda.

Ok, I don't really have an "agenda." But I have a lot of opinions on what's right and wrong and I read a lot. When I find an article that I like on the Internet, I like to put it up on my Facebook wall where I can easily find it and where other people who might be interested can see it and read it too. Because to me, one of the values of social networking, is being able to share with my friends and see the things they'd like to share with me. Sometimes I just post stuff because I see it on a site, don't have time to read it, and want to remember to go back later.

Since I'm a liberal, and might I say that I'm probably more liberal than many, a lot of the articles I post have (surprise!) a liberal bent. I believe in unions, collective bargaining, and workers rights. I'm pro-choice and feminist. I’m sex positive and pro-sex education. I don't go to church but if I did I'd be Unitarian, although I only half jokingly refer to myself as pagan. I am a supporter of public schools and teachers and I believe our educational system is failing our kids not because of "bad teachers," but because lawmakers are trying (and failing) to legislate learning. I vote Democrat. I support small farms and local businesses and I recycle. I think gay people should be able to get married and sick people should be able to smoke pot. I feel that health insurance is a right, not a privilege, and addiction is a disease, not a choice. (And by the way, I'm not interested in taking your guns away. I like to shoot and I'm good at it.)

I like to read about all of those subjects, along with art, science, Apple, literature, LOL cats, religion, philosophy, food, dysfunction, crime, and lists from the editors at Cracked.com and product descriptions from the geniuses at Woot! and ThinkGeek, along with a million other semi-relevant topics. I’m diverse that way and a lot of what I find interesting makes it to my facebook wall in the form of a shared link. Sometimes my shares get people talking, and sometimes they just serve as markers of something that caught my attention for a few stay minutes of the day. I like to think that my facebook wall serves as a sort of time capsule of my interests over time.

The problem with my more political postings, however, is that not all of my friends are liberal. Some are pretty middle of the road and some are conservative either in economics, social issues, or both. Most of the time, things stay pretty civil. Friends are friends for a reason, and politics and religion, while they can bind, can also sever relationships, so I try and balance presenting the issues I care about with the feelings of the people I like. I'm not usually offended by conservative friends. The problem is that it seems when I post anything of a political content, people seem to feel the need to argue politics. I don't mind an occasional exchange of ideas as long as things stay civil. I realize other people have opinions that differ from mine and I respect that. Sometimes I'm interested hearing their ideas on things and sometimes I'm not. I'll carry a discussion so far, but if it turns into an argument, I'll just agree to disagree.

Because I don't want to argue politics, some people have implied that I shouldn't post about it either. I'm not sure I follow that logic. The reason I don't like to argue politics is that I won't be changing my mind. I feel the way I do about most issues not because I'm "towing the party line," but because I've thought them through, researched them, and/or experienced them myself. It's not often that I change my mind on a particular topic, although when I have in the past, it's certainly wasn't because I was badgered into doing so. I'm also not posting about politics to bait anyone, or "stir things up." Everyone has had different experiences and, hopefully, formed their own opinions accordingly. I'm always happy to explain why I feel a certain way about something, but I find arguing politics exhausting and pointless. Will I talk politics? Yes, usually I will. I enjoy talking with other liberals, just as history buffs like talking to other history buffs and musicians like talking music. I also enjoy talking with some of my conservative friends because there are issues that we see eye to eye on and it's interesting to find out where people's values and experiences have led them because we all come by these things in different ways.

I look at it this way; Facebook is kind of like a big house that we all live in together. There are common areas and private areas. My profile is my private area, my room. Posts are like posters we put on the walls of our rooms. I can put whatever posters on my wall that I want. I promise not to put my posters on your wall, unless I know you'll like them too. If you're my friend, you're invited into my space but I don't need you to tell me I have bad taste in posters. If you don't want to look at them, you can simply not enter my room by blocking posts by me from reaching your news feed. If you feel really strongly, you can just unfriend me. Or you can be tolerant, as I promise to be of you. If you start posting about how you hate Jews/gays/Mexicans/Muslims/Lolcats, and they should all be lined up and shot, chances are I'm going to unfriend you because I find intolerance and ignorance deeply offensive. I won't unfriend you based on the fact that we vote for different candidates or we don't agree on issues like abortion or economic policy.

I won't unfriend you, but I probably won't take the bait either. I hope you understand.

Rediscovering the Importance of Girlfriends

There was a time in my life when almost all my good friends were male. Many years, in fact. Part of it was the novelty, because I had always been intimidated by boys in school. I grew up a little isolated and I barely understood other girls, let alone boys with their loud ways. As I grew older, I didn't feel comfortable with most women I met. I wasn't thin and I wasn't that concerned about dieting. I rarely wore makeup and never learned to do fancy things with my hair. I wasn't having children or hoping to have children. Most women I met I didn't feel like I fit in with. And after high school, I wasn't meeting a lot of other women anyway. I missed my high school girlfriends, many of whom had dispersed off into different parts of the country.

Over the years I met a lot of amazing, strong women. I had role models and old friends I had kept in touch with but from whom I was separated by distance. I am close to my mom. But I didn't have any women friends who I could call up and meet for lunch. I still don't have very many of them. But I have rediscovered why friendships between women are so precious. I've cultivated them where I can. Some online, some old friends I don't see very often, some old friends I've started to see more frequently, some family, some co-workers. Some the same age and some years older or younger.

I still have a lot of male friends. And they're great, I love them. They appreciate my cooking, remind me not to take things too seriously, feed my cats when I go out of town, carry things to my basement, help me with yard work and car repairs. Some of them commiserate with me over relationships and some make me feel funny or get angry at injustices they feel have been perpetrated against me. They take me to dinner, buy me silly little gifts when I'm feeling down and give me a male perspective on problems. My male friends are wonderful to me in many ways and I love them but they are still vastly different relationships than the ones I have with my female friends.

I've gone through some tough times in the last few years and in riding them out I've noticed a few differences in the way my male versus female friends react to problems. The men tend to disappear. They can't fix my problem and they don't know what to say so they kind of vanish into the ether until things even out. Some of them give me a lot of advice and then if I don't follow it, they get angry. Which really isn't that helpful when dealing with stressful situations. You want your friends around you, not purposefully staying away or being angry with you. I know not all men are like this but it's been my experience that its pretty common. They mean well, they just don't react in ways that I understand. Which by now I am starting to expect, even though it still hurts sometimes.

My female friends, however, will sit with me for hours. Sometimes we talk about our problems, sometimes we distract each other with other topics. Sometimes we don't talk much at all. The best thing is, they are always here (or there!) for me. Sometimes we can only talk on the phone, via text or over the Internet but even when they aren't "here" they are available, concerned, understanding and always ready with a sense of humor and a dose of perspective. Most of us have gotten to an age where we've had a few disappointing relationships with men, perhaps a divorce. Even if we're married we know that a romantic relationship, no matter how wonderful the spouse, can't and shouldn't be expected to meet our every need.

And so, if we're lucky, we have our girlfriends. These relationships are precious and we need to treat them as such. Though our lives are all busy, we need to keep in touch, reach out, get together, or simply send a note or an email. For all the smart, funny, caring, beautiful women I know... thank you. You are appreciated and you are important!