Meeting Up with Online Contacts

With the advent of social media, it has often been said that your real friends are the ones you have around you and not the ones you meet online. I'm sorry but I love many of the people I've met online and some of them I have considered to be my friends since well before the invention of the modern internet and Windows and definitely before the term, social media ever started to be in common use.

I have met a few of them over the years. Sometimes they are quieter in person than online. Sometimes it's just the opposite. Sometimes we seem to have said everything there is to say online and it's difficult to make conversation in person without repeating ourselves. Other times we don't discuss much other than what the topic of where we met is online and in-person we really get to know one another by talking about anything and everything. It's always an adventure.

This past week two separate women contacted me out of the blue to join them for coffee here in my own little village. The first one is a businesswoman who joined a networking site called Alignable where you basically only interact with other businesses.  She has lived in the area for the past ten years but she has never really become part of the community as she did her work elsewhere. She is now in the transition of bringing her business here. She thought it would be good to get to know some other people in the area so she has started reaching out to make coffee dates with other local business people she finds on that computer site. I wasn't really comfortable with this in the beginning. I mean, I didn't have a clue who she was or know anything about her line of work. Why would she want to meet me?  But after a week or so of writing a few messages back and forth, I decided I would go and find out. I did a little computer search on her so I had some idea of who to look for in the restaurant. She seemed a little impressed that I recognized her and knew just where she worked and lived. I'm apparently more computer literate than she is so perhaps I can be of some assistance to her in the future. She is a lovely lady and we found a lot of topics to discuss other than what we each do in our respective businesses. We exchanged a stack of business cards that we can each give to our own contacts so now I guess I'm networking offline as well as online.  I also told her of various social gatherings where she might meet more of the people she lives amongst and hopes to work with. I do hope she comes to some of them so I can get to know her better. I think we could become great friends.

The second one contacted me just the evening before she wanted to meet with me. She was going to be in my area the next morning and wondered if I was going to be free. I did a quick check with my hubby to see if he had any plans for us, but he was only planning to make a trip to the dump so I agreed to meet with her. Now this one I knew from a Facebook group or two so I knew we had something in common, but I didn't know much more about her either. We met through Sketchbook Skool so of course she came fully prepared to draw during our meeting. I had thought of that originally but somehow managed to leave my sketchbook in my other bag.  Silly me!  Well, she did dig out her beautifully handmade sketchbook and proceeded to draw me anyway, as she uses it as a sort of journal and this was her way of recording out meeting. I did a quick doodle in a little lined notebook I had in my purse, but I also took a couple of pictures of her and combined them to create my own drawing once I got home.  This meeting was a very comfortable one. It didn't feel like meeting a stranger at all. I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did as I know she comes back to this area from time to time. I'd love to spend more time with her and have already promised to bring my sketchbook and be prepared to draw with her in the future.

I do feel I'm in the process of making two new friends that I never would have met if I had not found them online first.