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Monday, April 2, 2012

Little by Little, One Travels Far

"I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone." 
-Gandalf, The Hobbit

This has been a season of change, and a much needed one at that. We've been doing what we can to shake things up and get a new prospect on life. It's kind of amazing the things that it's leading to.

Have you ever tried to make new friends as an adult? Ever tried doing it without having school or a formal job? It's not easy. Jason observed the other day that we are in an awkward position too, because we're a little too punk-kid-like to relate much to the play-date parents, but a little to parental to relate much to the punk-kids around here. That's something they don't tell you about when you start a family young.
So the other night I decided to Google Cambridge/Boston writing groups and got a bunch of results from a website I was only briefly acquainted with- www.meetup.com. What a little gem this is! I type in a hand full of interests, and I'm given a list of respective groups and when they're meeting! By the end of the night I had joined three local groups and scheduled to meet the New Wave: Young Boston Feminists at the Wild & Scenic Film Festival!
We watched Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. It was inspiring and fascinating. To think, so much could be done in one country, starting with simply planting trees! One of my favorite scenes was of current military officers planting trees around their compounds. I think that army leaders around he world could take a lesson from that.
I met a great couple of women, one of whom, Daryl, I was delighted to find several commonalities with. I also learned that she writes for Empower Dalit Women of Nepal , which happens to need more copywriter help right now! I'm meeting with the president of the organization this Wednesday.
For the next New Wave meeting I'm going to, we're discussing the book Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters.

I guess the moral of the story is that the momentum from making one thing happen is bound to start other things happening too!

3 comments:

  1. Meetup is pretty awesome. I turned to it in desperation when we first moved to New York because we had mad 0 new friends since getting married and it was starting to feel awful lonely. I tried a few meetup groups, and one of them has been really fantastic.
    I liken making friends to dating. There's a lot of non-connections, lots of "I hope they like me as much as I like them" that never pans out, some crazy/stalkers, but also handful of real keepers that make it worth it.

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  2. Yup. A desperate need for friends as an adult/mom is what turned me from an introvert to an extrovert. I will start up random conversations with other moms in just about any place now. Teaching Kindermusik has turned me into even more of an extrovert. I hardly recognize the girl I used to be in high school that would hang back and watch. What I've learned is that pretty much everyone wants more friends. Especially mom's with young children. Sometimes you'll weird people out but for the most part you'll find you have something in common (even if it's only being a mom but hey that's a lot)

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