Never Strangers Again

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All of us who are creating a community online – the bloggers, writers, entreprenuers, artists – we have given up the option of ever becoming complete strangers again. Think about that for a minute. We have built so many online connections, all over the world, that it is hard to go anywhere and go unnoticed. I say that as a good thing. As we walk around in this binary garden spreading our ideas, crushing the physical boundaries under our bare feet, we are creating a whole new world for ourselves. We are building relationships online that are, some times, more meaningful than our “real-world” relationships. These new folks just “get us” and align with our stream of thought unlike anybody we have ever met before.

I have been living in the gorgeous, sunny Florida for the last six years or so. Every time before this, when I moved somewhere, it was a complete new beginnning for me. A clean slate. I did not know a single person outside my immediate surroundings (far away relatives aside). So, every time I moved to a new place, I was a total stranger. I did not know a single person in that new world and nobody even knew my name. I liked it that way. I like the process of building friendships more than maintaining them. Doesn’t mean that I don’t like keeping my friends around, but it excites me more to make new connections.

I crave that feeling of going somewhere where nobody knows my name. Starting all over again. As I begin to count down my time in Florida, and move somewhere new in August, I had a surprising realization. I realized that I had lost the opportunity to feel brand-new for the rest of my life. It is not necessarily a bad thing, and yes, I agree that I don’t need a new location to feel brand-new, and every new day is an opportunity to feel like and be a new person. I get it. But I will certainly miss the feeling of being total stranger. Now that I have grown and made such wonderful friends on the web, it will be hard to be a stranger again. This community will grow and blossom into a whole new world for me. I hope it does. And it is comforting to know that no matter where my travels and my life leads me, some of my dearest friends, deepest sources of inspiration are just a wi-fi connection & a laptop away.