Friends
Online friends versus real friends. Online life versus real life. All these briar-fences and hedges we construct when we speak so that we don’t admit the possibility that people we meet online are, you know, people, meaning as much to us as people we meet elsewhere.
I don’t want to hear that nonsense any more, and in fact I intend to laugh loudly and point a derisive finger whenever I do hear it. Much of my London trip was shaped by friends I’d originally met online, and I am simply bowled over by their generosity and trust.
Geoffrey Bilder became acquainted with my writing even before CavLec; he read “A Tale of Two Conversion Houses” (which I really need to get back up in some form) and has been following CavLec itself for ages. On the strength of that plus a brief phone call or two, he put me on the slate for the STM Innovations Seminar, staking some part of his own professional reputation that I wouldn’t turn out a fool, a lout, or a crashing bore. That’s how I got to go to London at all.
Quite some trust, there. I certainly hope I lived up to it!
A LiveJournal friend and occasional play-by-email GM, resident of Oxford, invited David and me on a day-trip to that paragon of college towns. She planned our activities, spent the entire day shepherding us around, wouldn’t let us so much as reach for a credit card, and had gifts for us (gifts! as though the day hadn’t been gift enough!) before we hopped back on the bus to London. The trip was a jewel, a real joy and privilege, and I can’t thank her enough.
Another LiveJournal friend who works at the Wellcome Trust Library invited me to her workplace and introduced me to a professionally-relevant colleague—again, trusting that I wouldn’t damage her standing in her workplace! She also took us for an absolutely lovely lunch, and kindly didn’t mind that I was limping like a limpet, having fallen that morning.
Friends are friends. I met some of my friends online. Anyone who can’t accept that my friends are my friends and I don’t draw a distinction between friends met online and friends met offline—probably isn’t my friend.