Friends — and I’m talking girlfriends here — have always been an important part of my life. As an adult, I’ve seemed to categorize them into one or more categories: work friends, play friends, Hubby’s friends, couple friends, tennis friends, dance friends, etc. And those are just the current ones. If we pan backwards, we’ll find friends from my childhood and college and from every city I’ve ever lived.
I had a large network of friends in the Alabama city where I lived until shortly after I turned forty. Some I worked with; some were tennis partners. I met some by serving on the boards of multiple non-profits. I found friends at church and in a couple of social clubs to which we all seemed to belong. Several of us were in a group of close to a dozen who met pretty much every month to celebrate someone’s birthday. I finally moved and left those friends behind but, they stayed in my heart unlike any others. Even though I’ve lived in Nashville as long as I lived in that city, and I don’t see them that often, I still consider them my closest friends. Maybe because we were younger–I was in my 20′s and 30′s–and I grew up with these women.
Another pool of friends for me has been my college sorority. Sure, I knew I’d make friends while in school, and I stay in touch with a few of them, but the real surprise has been the not only the quality, but the quantity of friends — literally hundreds — I’ve made with women from their teens to their nineties, as an alumna members of the organization. Naturally I’m closer to some than others, but when I meet someone and we click, it’s not unusual to find we have this bond as well. Go figure.
The world wide web gives us a whole new way to make friends — the Internet. A writing partner from upstate New York is planning to come to Killer Nashville and stay with us. She questioned that I’d just open my home up to someone I didn’t know. (Those suspicious Yankees!) But I did know her. We’d communicated a kot online and I liked her a lot. I’ve met quite a few people in the writing world via the Internet. Some I’ve met through their blogs, others through online classes, and still others through sites where writers gather like Agent Query Connect, Absolute Water Cooler, and Query Tracker. Some I’ve clicked with, others not. It always amused me when I make a new online friend and she’s from the Nashville area.
The point is, it doesn’t matter where we make our friends. It just seems important to most of us to have friends. In fact, twenty-nine-year-old Rachel Bertsche has written a book about making friends. Rachel moved to Chicago with her new husband a couple of years ago, leaving her girlfriends behind in New York City. She missed not having best friends nearby. So she decided to find some by having a friend date each week through 2010 and blogging about it. Her blog, MWF Seeking BFF, was such a hit she’s continued it AND she wrote a book about her girlfriend dating experiences. NO, it isn’t just a collection of her blogs. It’s behind the scenes stories.
I’ve been following her blog for over a year. I don’t remember how I found it. The first time I left a comment (Okay, okay. I confess. I don’t leave a lot of comments either!), she sent me a brief e-mail thanking me for reading her blog and leaving the comment. Now, in Blogging 101, we were taught to answer comments on the website, but to take an extra step and email the commenter? That was a first for me. Do I e-mail people new to my blog when they leave comments? You bet your voluptuous bottom I do.
Anyway, Rachel’s blog is clever and cute, and her book came out a month ago today. You can get it from Amazon here. She’s gotten an amazing response for any author, much less a debut one. She’s been reviewed in People Magazine, Oprah … I’m seeing her name and book everywhere. It’s distinctive cover makes it hard to miss. 
Why, Monday I was still trying to wake up while perusing The Tennessean and there it was on the cover of The Living section of Nashville’s largest daily newspaper. Since I was pretty sure Rachel hadn’t seen it (she’s in Chicago, after all) I squealed and jumped up and down for her. Fully awake by then, I e-mailed her telling her the news and offered to mail it to her.
Check out my friend, Rachel’s website, or better yet, buy her book. Let me know what you think. And while you’re at it, where’s the oddest place you’ve ever met a friend?
~Kay
