How many friends does the average person keep in touch with as they move away? Most? Maybe one or two? Many? None? In my case it is few. One I keep in touch with is a fourth grade friend. We don't talk often. I keep in contact with him via IM, reading his blog, and receiving the rare email.
Keeping up with friends made on a mission can be hard once you leave. On a mission some of the strongest friendships are developed, either as a companionship struggling to find people or helping your investigator learn how to listen to the spirit and become baptized. As time goes on, I have lost contact with most of the people I met in England. But a year ago I was able to start one up again after I noticed a posting on the mission electronic board from the daughter of a family I taught. After seeing this, I communicated and finally met up with her and her sister at BYU. During the visit I found out what was happening and that they have been good active members of the church.
What do these two situations have in common? Well they both show that a willingness to write stuff online allows people to stay in touch. In the first example, Ryan, my friend since fourth grade, has a blog in which I found out his wife is going to BYU. They had a vacation in Hawaii and a small one at Bear Lake. This blog information encourages me to want to keep in touch better than if I didn't know what was going on. I'm even thinking of asking if he had a raspberry milkshake because Bear Lake is famous for them.
Contrast these examples with a friend from BYU, which I saw in the temple a couple of months ago. After catching up and finding out that he teaches in a local high school, we left with neither of us asking for any contact information. I knew that through the years of non-contact we had moved on, and it would be difficult to start that friendship over.
So, I am proposing that blogging helps keep friendships despite being many miles away. What do you think? And if you are an old friend, I would really like to hear from you!!
P.S. If you are an old friend and have a blog, a link would be nice. I will throw a link and comment where I can.
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3 comments:
I agree with Devon that a blog is a great way to share with friends what is going on with you, but in a certain way, it is sort of voyeuristic in that if you know a distantly located friend has a blog, you can go look at what is going on with them and they will never know you have been there looking. There's something peeping-Tom-ish about that.
Also, there is something sad about a friendship in which the people involved don't want to call to talk to each other directly, but prefer to visit each other's blogs and leave only the briefest of remarks. Where is the warmth of the voice and the effusive bubble of heartfelt conversation that makes short work of years of events? Has love begun to wax cold when we are not willing to bless each other with the sound of our voice and listen to each other talk?
I like to use the work "lurker" instead of stalker, or peeping-tom... because people may not feel comfortable starting up a conversation right off, but may "lurk" around and see what is going on in your life and then decide to finally strike up a conversation.
It's the comfort level of people, not them wanting to peer into your private life without you knwoing that drives blogs and people's desire to comunicate through them.
I like the fact that I can "keep up" with what my friends and family are up to and not have to call them all the time because our lives are pretty busy...
Do you like how the "lurker" posted anonymously!?!?
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