I love having like-minded friends. Sure, variety is the spice of life and all, but knowing you can send a random text message to a friend {or two, as is the case of this particular story} and begin an incredibly vast conversation is pretty sweet. This conversation touched on everything from celebrity doppelgangers {mine is Hilary Duff}, creating a seasonal moving dinner party, cookbooks we love but rarely use, having a cooking/talk show, creating our own cookbook, and ended with us declaring our love for each other.
That, my friends, is priceless.
And all possible because I like to get to know people I meet on the internet, in real life.
Blogging. If you are here, reading this, you like it. I've met people who haven't the slightest idea what blogging really is, and are quick to think that it's just like the early 2000's Live Journal emo diary of high school minded people. Au contraire. I may be a bad blogger, but even I know that it's about community, expressing yourself, and having a platform to share just about anything, really.
I love it.
It's no secret that I also really enjoy taking these friendships I have made online into the real world, and meeting people in person that I met online. Megan came to California for a race-cation a few years back and sparked this whole movement. Then I stayed at Julie's house when I ran the Rock n Roll Seattle half marathon{never met her before yet she took me into her home}, and just sort of snowballed as I met up with many other blog friends there and beyond.
I was hooked. I have had great success developing friendships online that worked well in real life also. On Instagram the other day, my friend Chelsea said she wanted to invite herself over to visit Austin. I didn't see anything wrong with that. I asked Billy and he was like "sure, why not? You have good taste in online friends." It didn't hurt that B really likes a cookie recipe Chelsea posted on her blog. I told Chelsea via Insta later, and she laughed and thought it was funny.
I just think it's normal.
So it was no surprise that I met up with a new running buddy today that I met through meetup.com. He's an older, retired gentleman who lives near me and runs all the time. We seemed to have lots to talk about {he is a self-professed chatter box}, and his schedule works with mine. I think I may have found me a new neighborhood running buddy!