A Week in My Head: Entry 6

A Week in My Head is some kind of journal of all the things that went on in my head the past week. Be it succes, struggle or just some random ramblings. I know it doesn’t replace professional counselling, but this is my kind of therapy – talking it out of myself in this way. Join me if you want and feel free to share your experiences. I’m sure we can learn from each other and A Week in My Head will be a less lonely time.

In case you missed any of the previous entries, you can find them on the A Week in My Head page!

Sorry for the long radio silence, but as you might know, I spent the last weekend in the UK, visiting friends. As I got home around 10 pm on Sunday night, I had zero energy left to write anything, least be coherent. I’ve been in a mostly positive piece of mind this past two weeks and due to many things happening all at once, I’m practically buzzing with excitement.

You might have seen a few hints of this on Twitter: very soon I’m going to move the blog to another server which also means I’m going to redesign it a bit and give it a new shiny look. The new feature images are under process and it’s going to be awesome. All the while I’ve been working on 2 new features coming in March in celebration of the 2nd anniversary and I seriously can’t wait to share those with you! And if I didn’t have enough on my plate yet, my friend, Justine from Whispers & Wonder and yours truly are working on opening a blog tour organising service for indie authors. At the moment we are working on the details and would like to build up a blogger base we can reach out to. So, if you are a blogger and would like to take part in blog/instagram tours, please consider filling out or form here, so we can reach out to you when the time comes! We are pretty excited to work on this project, so we hope we’ll have something concrete for you soon. Starting with a name. Maybe. 😉

The events of this past 2 weeks made me think a lot of found families and online friendships. And that’s what I’d like to talk about today.

Online friendships has always been an integral part of my life. I’ve never been a popular kid, I had a couple of friends but I never was one who was invited to hang out with others much – there are several reasons for that, one of them might be that I’m just really not good in any social situation as I get awkward and quiet and intimidated by everyone. Meeting people gives me anxiety, even if I’ve known them for years. So, it was always easier to stay at home with my books and writing and later on hanging out in online chat rooms. I could be more like myself that way and there was no one to judge me for my looks or my voice or for my general awkwardness. I was always extremely selective of whom I met in real life – one of the first experiences there was awful, but I’d rather not talk about it. Anyway, some of those friendships were pretty long lived, but eventually died out.

Except for one.

The found family

11 years ago I started a conversation with this guy. He was funny, liked writing and we were on the same wave length right away. He lives in another city, but for a time he lived in Budapest. He invited me once to a party, but I was afraid to go because I knew no one. 2 years ago we planned to meet as he had business in town but I got sick and couldn’t make it. There were long periods when we weren’t in touch much. And then there were periods when we talked a lot. We hardly agree on things, and we ALWAYS banter – like if you only saw some of our conversations, you’d think we don’t like each other at all. He threatens to kick my ass any opportunity he gets. And still. A few years ago, not long after I learned about having a brother, one day we’ve been talking about that. I mentioned that I always wanted to have a brother. He said he’ll be mine and ever since we treat each other as real siblings. Despite everything, I consider him more to be my sibling than my two real ones. Blood is not what makes someone family. 2 weeks ago, on the day I was supposed to flight to the UK he woke me at 6 am with the news that they are in the hospital. His wife went into labour and I was about to become an aunty for the third time (my sister has two sons). So, naturally, I spent hours chatting him, trying to keep him on the ground and give moral support. And later that day, my beautiful niece was born and I’m more proud of her (and him!) than I would have imagined. He occasionally sends me little updates and pictures and I’m incredibly grateful that he makes me part of this important event of his life. We don’t talk as much as we used to, but that doesn’t matter, when you know that the other is always there and you can share the important things with each other.

Making friends all around the world

So, as you see making online friendship is nothing new to me. Admittedly, as I get older it’s harder to make friends offline and I really had become isolated by 2016 when I started to hang out in a GoodReads group. I made a couple of friends here, one of them I’m still in contact with and she was a huge support for me when I started the blog. Which I never expected to become such a great experience. And would change my life in so many ways.

This past 2 years I attended cons, met many more people I would have thought and made friends both online and offline. Mostly online. I said a few times before that I found my place in the book community and that’s great. It makes me happy when I reach out to people with new feature ideas and they jump on it, or say they usually don’t take part in such things but I’m a cool person, so they’ll make an exception. I love organising things and taking part in events and I’m proud that I could build up such a good reputation.

And I feel privileged I can call some of them friends – a word I’m not throwing around lightly. Some of them helped me through an especially shit time, some I bonded with on Twitter over one thing or another – I made a friend over one of my tweets regarding my thoughts of followers, ironically. And then there are that friend I made when she hired me to beta read her book. It started as a work relationship but had become much more in a short time. And sometimes I wonder if I deserve her friendship because holy shit, she and her family are really awesome. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t invite just anyone to stay in my home for a few days. Last weekend was awesome in many ways – I’ve got a birthday cake, was welcomed by people I never met before but whom apparently already heard about me (we went to my friends’ husband’s gig where his bandmades were absolutely friendly), and got accepted into the tribe by their dog, lol. All of this is probably not really a special thing, but it didn’t happen too often in my life that I was invitied and was taken care of like this.

In a way I’m experiencing things I should have a long time ago. I have people supporting me in ways I never was before, I’m working closely together with people which is pretty new to me – I’m more used to do things by myself. Those who say online friendships aren’t real, never been lonely and felt like an outsider in their own lives to the point where they were driven to join to online communities. Online friends kept me sane and taught me things about the world and myself I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. It can be hard not to be able to meet these friends due to distance, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t just as important as those who live close to you. I’m just really lucky to have such awesome people in my life regardless if I can meet them regularly or just once or twice a year. Or not at all. It just doesn’t fucking matter.

In case you missed any of the previous entries, you can find them on the A Week in My Head page!

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