Friendship through blogging
The thing about having a boring life is, you don't really have much to say about it. Every time someone asks me "what's new?" in real life, my answer is almost always "not much". I could tell them about the lovely things I thrifted recently, or the new houseplants I just bought, or the bread or cake or cookies I baked last Friday, or what an amazing country Iceland is and how it's been in my mind a lot lately, but the people that I know in real life (except for the husband, who is my biggest and only fan) wouldn't interested in any of those. Trust me, I tried telling them all those things. All I got in return was a blank stare.
I started thinking about all the responses I got on the Fediverse when I posted about this café with a quirky window in Iceland (I received photos people took from inside the café, which I didn't get to see), or the cinnamon rolls that I just baked that looked all wonky (some kind souls told me they still looked delicious). There are actually people out there who share the same interests as me. The tragedy is, I don't know any of those people in real life.
Have you ever met any of your blog readers in real life? Well, I happen to be married to one of mine. We used to live on the opposite side of the world. He started reading my blog about a year after I started blogging. We became online friends and we would chat on ICQ almost every night. We were online friends for 4 years before we finally met in real life and eventually fell in love. We got married exactly a year after the day we first met in person. We actually celebrated our 20th anniversary this year!
Other than the husband, I've had people in the wild (including a couple who lived in our old neighbourhood) come up to me to say hi because they recognised me from my blog and/or Flickr. It was both awkward and cool at the same time. I always didn't know why to say, but, luckily, the husband was always by my side to rescue me (as in doing most of the talking for me) when it happened. He's always had much better social skills than me.
I've also met with a few other Canadian bloggers in real life through the personal projects they had, one of which gave me the opportunity to show some of my photography works at gallery spaces in Toronto! Those were fun, but still a bit awkward.
What wasn't super awkward was meeting with my closest blog friends. I met with my Australian buddy R in Niagara Falls (common interest: blogging) and had a really great time that I wish would never end. Unfortunately, she was doing a US tour at the time and the Canadian side of Niagara Falls was just a quick detour. I still wish she was living nearby instead of on the other side of the world.
Then I had an impromptu meeting with N in Michigan (common interest: web design). We hadn't been in touch for a long while at the time but I found myself in his neck of woods when the husband had to attend a training there. I sent him an email, not knowing if he still lived in the area. He replied and he did still live in the area, so we met up for dinner to catch up.
The last blog friend meet-up I had was in Ottawa. W (common interest: being Southeast Asian?) came to Ottawa all the way from Singapore for a work thing. As luck wouid have it, we happened to be in Ottawa at the same time for the husband's work thing. We met up, gave him a quick tour of Ottawa, and then we had dinner together.
Will I ever meet with any kindred spirits in real life through this new blog? Only time will tell. I kind of doubt it, though. I find it harder to form meaningful friendships in today's Internet than in the Internet of over 20 years ago. But the husband has made a small legion of online friends through a Discord group in the last two or three years, some of whom we've met in real life, so I guess there's still some glimmer of hope for it to happen. (And no, I'm not on Discord as a personal choice.)
If any of you, gentle readers, are going to be in the Southwestern Ontario part of Canada and would like to meet up and be awkward together, give me a shout. The husband would have to do most of the talking as I'm super shy and socially inept, but I promise to try to make it fun for everyone involved, and bring you my favourite chocolate from a local chocolatier. :-)