After doing a little re-wiring of the internet firmament yesterday lunchtime ahead of this post, I received a somewhat puzzled email from a long time internet friend…
“WTF?”
WTF indeed. As the more eagle eyed will have noticed - I moved my blog from WordPress to Blogger yesterday lunchtime. It’s something I have been thinking about doing for a while.
There are a number of technical advantages for moving the place I blog that I won’t bore you with for fear of causing you to fall asleep on the spot. I will mention unlimited photo uploads at Picasa, and unlimited use of Google Docs. Allied with the gradual arrival of “Google Me” (manifested through the new Google Profiles), it would appear something is going on in Mordor - and this time I am jumping on the ship rather than issuing punditry from a safe distance.
Why “Far Flung Friend” though?
I’ve liked the name for a long time. It fits well with the nature of many of the friendships I have forged over the last decade.
There’s the girl in Cornwall that I crossed paths with on MySpace (before Facebook!) - I recognised the beach in a photo of her bike ride as the one a mile from my parents house. The rest is history - six years of perhaps the closest friendship I have ever had - through highs, lows, good times and bad times. Throughout it all we’ve always been there to share a story, or to listen.
There’s the amazing singer songwriter in Oklahoma that I used to share morning coffee with - putting the world to rights several thousand miles apart. Life has dictated we touch base rarely these days, but when we do it’s like we only caught up yesterday.
There’s the web startup launcher in Texas, who appears almost every afternoon in a chat window, wise cracking, shooting the breeze, and asking after the family and children. Two young families, on opposite sides of the world who have never met, but are strangely similar.
There’s the glass artist in Oregon who jumped from the dot com crash to follow her dreams. We’ve travelled the journey from being single to having a young family together, shared highs, lows, and always cross each other’s paths with a wink and a smile.
There’s the incredibly hard working virtual office girl in Florida, who is always juggling ten projects, life, family, and a thousand and one ideas while sharing the daily grind via the social networks. I swear she has a time machine.
There’s the fantastic US blogger and jewellery artist who I first started reading when she lived on a canal boat over here, and who we shared the journey into parenthood with, met for fun lunches out, and has recently uprooted to experience family life state-side.
There’s the couple from Pittsburgh who lived a few miles down the road. She recognised me on a train platform en-route to London by the scarf W had knitted me. Great friendships were forged that are surviving their return home (Go Steelers!)
There are of course more. School teachers, office workers, Moms, Dads, busy people, lonely people, thoughtful people.
We’re all writing, we’re all reading, and when we get a chance, we catch up with each other via this amazing thing we call the internet.
We are bloggers.