The Nomad Mom Diary

I'm carrying around a LOT of baggage

So What If My Friends Are All Online

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I snort and then bury my head in the pillow. The bed shakes with my half-stifled laughter. Nomad Papa is not amused. “It’s 6am, why are you laughing?” he asks. “My friend just said the funniest thing,” I respond as I wipe the tears from my eyes. He raises his head in concern, looks around the empty room and then asks, very hesitantly, “Honey, do you have an imaginary friend?”

Most of my friends are people I’ve met online. It’s not that I don’t want to have friends who live near me, in fact I’d give my eye teeth (which teeth are those exactly? whatever, doesn’t matter…) to make just one friend here. But if there is one thing I’ve learned since our move last year, it is that if you are a thirty-something, mother of two, full-time employee, part-time writer, all the time wife, it is impossible to find the time to make new friends “in real life”.

Online Friends

Everytime I go online to hang out with my awesome online friends, I am bashed over the head by some article decrying the negative effects social media and virtual lives are having on us. You know what? I say BULLSHIT. So what if my friends are all online? Here are my top 6 reasons why online friends are just as good as the gals down the street.

Six Reasons Why Online Friends Are Awesome

  1. I can pick and choose the amazing people I want to keep in my life without needing to cap them with a fifty-mile radius. Which is great as I find that my broadband gets much better miles per gallon than my Honda Jazz.
  2. I can talk to my friends ANYTIME I want. I have a hard time remembering my one item grocery list, so I really appreciate being able to send a little note whenever I think of something funny to say. I’m pretty sure my friends equally appreciate getting to hear the joke before I forget the punchline.
  3. I can hang out with them in my pajamas. Ok, truth be told, I also hang out with my local friends in my PJ’s sometimes, but only with online friends can I do it 100% of the time without fearing repercussions.
  4. I can equally *not* hang out with them anytime I want and no one gets their panties in a wad. “Yesterday? Oh, I was so busy with the kids that I didn’t have time to check on facebook. Sorry about that!” – perfectly acceptable excuse, no offense taken.
  5. I can tell them ANYTHING. Anything. I find that cyber wall to be more effective than the screen in the confessional. It is incredibly freeing to be able to complain or confess or whine or whatever to a bunch of women who have never met and probably never will meet my family/coworkers/local friends/etc. It’s a lot cheaper than a therapist, that’s for sure, and the advice is probably better.
  6. It is a wide, wide world filled with wildly hilarious, deeply passionate and incredibly caring individuals. Thanks to social media and blogging, I get to interact with all of them.

So what if all of my friends are online. I fall asleep chuckling with the American and Canadians and wake up commiserating with people in Europe and Asia. This is one of the greatest blessings technology has bestowed upon my life…the chance to meet people who walk parallel paths to my own. If you can’t see this for the blessing that it is, maybe, just maybe the problem is with you.

(Why not read a book written by me and a bunch of my online friends? I Just Want to Be Alone…now available on Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble and Google Play.)

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Comments

  1. Yup. That’s what I say all the time and wrote a post about this last year. We now live in a time when we have the opportunity to choose the people we want to surround us not by location or luck, but by similar interests, senses of humor, struggles and successes.

    There are people online to remind you that even if you’re physically sitting alone, you never have to feel lonely. If that’s not a friend, then what is?

  2. I’d probably have hanged myself by now if it weren’t for online friends. My two besties are girls I met online and have only met a handful of times in real life, but if totally go in to bat for both of them before quite a few of my RL friends. Not that I don’t love my RL friends, but my online friends rule. You included!!!!

  3. Preach it. I think without online I would have no friends at all. Well, not because I have no IRL friends, it’s just that everyone always seems too monumentally busy to get together. They have hockey for the kids, or they’re pulling extra shifts at work, or something. When we try to get together, half the time it runs horribly late or gets cancelled cause Joey is projectile vomiting and Susie is throwing a huge temper tantrum. Then when we do get together it’s a massive undertaking of planning and then we’re interrupted by kids every 30 seconds and can’t have a conversation anyway.

  6. Yes I 100% agree with this. My husband does not understand how important my online friends are to me, nor how much good they do for me. I am now 3 years into a new city, state and making new physical friends here has been difficult, but knowing I have friends, some even from young childhood all the way through to not even ever meeting, sustains me and I feel quite happy with those I do have and how I may share anything with my friends that do not live in the same city as I do. 🙂

  7. I bet there are reams of sociological studies that look at the impact that on line friendships have had on how we interact. Most of my friends have almost nothing in common with me other than our kids, our geography, or our jobs. We share some common interests, but that has more to do with chance than design. My on line friends are in some ways so much closer to my temperament and share my sense of humour, and sometimes even my views. Any friendship is of value if it adds to our lives.
    You add to mine Lynn.

  8. This is SO true! And when I lived overseas, it was even more important to me to maintain friendships via social media. LOVE this.

  9. I loved this and then I nearly fell over backwards laughing so hard I was crying when I got to the part about hanging out in your PJs. As I read this I sat in my PJs, reeking of b/o, contimplating if I can squeeze in a shower at 3:00 pm. I love my online buddies and I LOVED this post.

    Thanks for sharing.
    xoxo