A Time For Everything

I have met my soulmate. For an odd duck like me, that's not easy to do. I march to the beat of my own drummer and I have a weird sense of humor that can come off as rude if you don't get where I'm coming from and my world, geographically speaking, is pretty small. I live 12 minutes from where I work. I work for my husband and we have three employees. I spend time once a month with 30-odd other writers, six of whom are some of my closest friends.

And that's about it. I travel occasionally, like to the conference I attended last October, but I'm not the personality that jumps right into a group of people and charms them. I hang back, I don't talk much, I listen, I wait for invitations. It gets lonely sometimes.

But.

I recently switched online chat groups. Not because I didn't like the ladies I was hanging out with. I did. A lot. But one gal lives in Germany and her kids were getting home from school when I was just getting online, so rightfully so, it was time for her to be the mom and pay attention to her family. Her writing workday was essentially over. The other gal lives here in the states, but is more of a night owl and has various issues crop up and would just disappear on me, leaving me alone, which was not why I was in a chat room.

I had been getting emails randomly from another gal you might have heard of (Kristen Lamb) to join her band of merry creatives in a chat room for forty minute timed sprints. You can do anything during those forty minutes--write, edit, work your day job, exercise, clean house, whatever--and then come back and report your productivity, chat for a few, and then get back into another forty minute sprint.

So I went. I lurked the first few times, because, hello, nervous newbie here. But eventually I started chatting and reporting and then wielding the timer. Getting to know the core group as well as those who are more sporadic visitors.

And I "met" Jenn.

We clicked. We share a sense of humor. We share a lot of similarities. For example, anyone who knows me, knows I don't go anywhere without a travel mug of tea. Well--she takes coffee with her everywhere she goes. We like the same music. We're both writers. We're close in age. We're both moms. Anyway, as I said, we clicked.

It's been great. Also, I've become a text-er. I mean, we don't text all day everyday like teenagers, but our interactions are not limited to the online chat. We share stuff outside of the 9-5 workday. My love of hockey rubbed off and she decided to watch a hockey game to see what it was all about. We even Facetimed while we watched and chatted for most of the time she was able to watch. (She's on the east coast where it was later and couldn't watch the whole thing.) While she's not watching playoffs like I am, she does ask about the results of the games she knows I'm following.

Awww...

It's just that, throughout my life, I've just had so few people with whom I've clicked that much and that quickly. It's a gift at this point in my life and I'm so thrilled to have found her.

It's no secret--or it shouldn't be--that I'm what's called a fan girl. A girl of any age who has more than a passing or basic love of something--specifically things like tv shows, movies, books and the like or characters from those things. It seems that it's okay to be a rabid fan of sports or your country or the military (I'm passionate about all those things too), but being so crazy about a tv show or book or character that you participate in fandom culture, that's still a bit of a head-scratcher for most people.


But I digress...on Saturday, I get to meet a gal who is a part of the BBC's Robin Hood fandom that I've been involved in since 2010 or 2011. The show's been over for many years, but there's a few of us who still congregate online each week to say hi and catch up. One of those friends is in Dallas this week, and so we're going to meet at a local restaurant and do what we fan girls do--chat and share and chat some more.



I'm super excited about this. It's not the first time I've met someone from the Robin Hood fandom. Back in 2012, four other ladies all traveled from around the Mid-West to Fort Worth and we had a meetup at my house. It was a precious time to meet like-minded women and to get to know one another and share ourselves.

In fact, I'll be rooming with one of those ladies when I go to Denver in October for a writing conference. Can't wait to see her again either.

And then the other day, I sort of connected with another gal who's also attending the con in Denver. She wants to go to see the Avalanche (Colorado's hockey team) play as well and mentioned she was getting tickets to the Stars first home game against the Vegas Golden Knights and--bam--we're gonna meet somewhere at the American Airline Center and connect. And if that wasn't enough, she actually lives in Pittsburgh and already invited me to her fair city.

Which means what, Jen???

The Pittsburgh Penguins!!!! I can go see a game at some point on their home ice. woooot!!

Okay, so happy Friday to you and happy Friday to me.

Have a great weekend.