Friday!

What a first week back in Minnesota!  I had big plans of what I was going to accomplish this week and for the most part none of it happened. My life went in a totally different direction and I pretty much became a “Girl Who Lunches” this week.

For whatever reason, I had a lot of connections this week.  Calls and messages to have coffee or lunch.  On Wednesday I had two coffee dates and a lunch date.  I am not complaining, I like my friends and I like seeing them.  When hanging out with one group this week one of the ladies said, “You just know so many people within the different things that you do.”

That made me think.

My son Justin was a connector.  If there is such a  thing (and if not I am making it a thing right now), Justin brought people together.  His work friends met his life friends, his hang out friends met his college friends, and so on.  The nice thing about this connecting is that these people (kids really) now have each other in his absence and they will say again and again how it was Justin who brought them together.  I am so glad they have that kind of connecting support.

This week I spent some time thinking of myself as a connector.  For whatever reason I decided to make a chart this morning of the different relationships we probably all have within our lives in something like this:

Some of the titles may change, but you probably have a similar grouping if you wrote them down.  Mine are defined as:

Book Friends:  People I relate to through books.  My book club, authors, publishers, well… YOU.

Adventure Friends:  The friends I can call up to do a 5k, mud run, stomp the grapes dressed as Lucille Ball…. they know who they are.  😉

Work Out Friends:  The friends that will take walks with me, ride bike, meet me at the gym

School Friends:  The people I still connect with from my school days either on Facebook, email, and occasionally in Real face to face life.

Church Friends:  Friends I have made through church.

Movie Friends:  That awesome list of people I can text to go to a movie with.

Family Friends:  Family members who are friends to me as well… they fall into several f thee categories.

Friends You Volunteer With:  I may have met these friends through volunteering somewhere.

Library Friends:  Friends I have made through my love for the library.

Coffee Friends:  You know who you are… we catch up over a great cup of Joe….or two…. or three

Group Friends:  Friends I have made through a group I hang out with.  These are people I usually meet up with when we are doing a group thing.

On-Line Friends:  People I have met through this blog and through other on line things I participate in.  While some may argue that is not a friendship, I beg to differ.  Quite a few of you who I have “met” through this website, I have also met in real life. I do consider you friends.  A few I have not met in RL have sent me cards and encouragement this year.  I consider you friends.

Friends Of Friends:  People I met through your friends.  I may not go and do something without the mutual friend, but some day I might.

Phone Friends:  I think we all have them.  They are friends, they re people we know in RL… but for whatever reason can never get together and basically keep up through phone calls and texts.

Work Friends: The people I met through a job and enjoy.

Lunch Friends:  These friends I mainly hang out with over a lunch date to catch up.

Common interest friends:  Friends I made through taking a class or doing a study.

Business friends:  People I have met through our business or my Freelance business who could fall into one of these other categories.

 

I should have a point to this.  I think I do.  When I look at these groupings I can see where a friend may have started in one but is now also in one or more of these groups.  For instance our book club started through a job I used to work at.  Since Bookies started that way, the initial start up group was work friends, and some that are still in the book club so the work friends also become book friends.  Business friends would be like the people we went to Australia with last year who, because of that trip, we also took this trip to Mexico this year and they also fall into Lunch Friends, where we meet and catch up.

Anyway… I am constantly in awe of connections and how they work into our lives.  This weeks connections led me to two potential job opportunities through my freelance.  That was a bonus to my meet ups this week. So while I did have other plans for my week, these meet ups really worked out well in the direction I was planning on going this week anyway which was to start working on lining up a few freelance jobs.

It’s funny how things can work out.