This past Halloween I was feeling low. Halloween used to be my favorite holiday.
Me and my old buddies would get together and get stupid and have a laugh.
Now I'm an adult with responsibilities and most of my friends have moved away or moved on.
(don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my wife and baby for a pumpkin themed kegger)
Thanksgiving was also a bit melancholy for me.
A few years ago Thanksgiving was a great time to hit the clubs.
People were back from school, we could catch up and enjoy the high energy vibe.
There would be no point going there now.
My friends stopped going, I hate the music they play, and I hate crowds...okay, I hate people.
But I do miss having close friends to 'bro-down' with.
In the last few years I started going to comic conventions and met some cool dudes and was directed to an online forum. I got involved and had a few laughs with some interesting people of all races and ages from all over the world.
I also got a PS3 and started playing R:FOM online. It was a pretty wild experience to be playing a game that winds down to a couple guys (one in Australia) sitting on a virtual bridge talking about life till about 3 am (my time).
Since then I've chatted with people from Scotland, England, Mexico City, and Japan.
I've also been using Youtube to find info on my video game and discovered and extension of the online game community. Pretty neat.
Now all of that is well and good, but I still missed hanging out.
I decided to pray for friends...how lame and pitiful is that?
I also did a few things on my own.
I 'Googled' some people.
ziltch - Unless some of my old buddies were able to change their ethnicity then my internet kung-fu isn't what I thought it was.
I decided to do a search for people in my area with common interests.
I found some comic book clubs and joined a group on Meetup.com. We seemed to click pretty well and it may grow into something.
I also decided to get more involved in the local association of my fellow Youth Pastors.
I tend to think of clergy as being pretty 'mainstream' or 'straight-laced' people, so for a long time I was hesitant to jump in, thinking that I probably wouldn't fit in.
Well, it might be the case that I don't fit in, but it turns out that these guys are really open minded and accepting, so it's turning out to be a really positive experience.
The only thing is that they communicate a lot on facebook. Yikes.
It was bad enough that I had a silly little My-Space, but now I'm on facebook too.
Well, it turns out that facebook isn't that bad. It's not as 'teen spirt' as My-Space and I found this little blogger thing. So now I'm trying this out too.
(let me know how I'm doing)
Probably the coolest thing of all is that I just spoke with an old high school buddy that I haven't seen in about 15 years.
She 'Googled' my name, and now we are friends again.
I also just reconnected with a old friend from about ten years ago through My-Space.
So let me recap...
holidays-lonley, forums-online games-youtube, pray-googled-meetup, association-facebook-blogger
Okay, that pretty much brings us up to the present. I'm definitely feeling more connected.
I'm pretty grateful for this scary web-tech stuff and I hope all this leads to some good solid friendships.
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