Girl and City

Part of 30 Days of Me.

I’ve been blogging for eight years, so you can imagine that I’ve gained and lost a lot of readers during that time. A few of my readers have been following me for up to six years, which is longer than I’ve known some of my closest friends. In addition to commenting on blogs, I have also gotten to know readers through email, chat messenger, snail mail, and occasionally, in person. Today I’m going to talk about one reader in particular with whom I have done all these things.

I stumbled upon PJ‘s blog in 2004 through the blog of her (real-life) friend, Tatiana. PJ was a very consistent commenter, and seemed to take a genuine interest in my life. After a year of following each other’s blogs, we became penpals. We wrote each other embarrassingly long letters every few weeks, and this lasted for several months. We even sent each other birthday presents by post.
At the time, PJ was studying in Vancouver, but in 2007, she transferred to Ontario for university to be closer to her boyfriend. So I took a bus to her university and finally met her. We spent the afternoon chatting and catching up with each other’s lives as if we’d known each other all along. Although she was not what I expected (I don’t really know what I expected), we got along extremely well and she remains one of the sweetest people I have ever known.
In 2008, she moved in with her boyfriend in UniversityTown, so we saw more of each other. We even had a baking party at her house, and that was when I met her boyfriend.
She had just gotten engaged when I first met her in 2007. I didn’t expect to be included in her wedding, but she ended up inviting me to her wedding shower, bachelorette party, and wedding. At her wedding shower, I also met Tatiana, the girl whose blog I had read in 2004.
In the summer of 2009, PJ had a small wedding of about 100 people in a country club on the outskirts of the City. I felt so honoured to be included in her special day and to be among the most important people in her life.

Looking back, it’s unbelievable how a few comments in 2004 sparked this friendship. Unlike my real-life friends, I am not worried about what my move to Singapore will do to this friendship; I know this friendship will withstand the test of time and distance because we have overcome that already. We did not become friends out of context or convenience. We made a commitment to each other when we were total strangers because we related to each other on a deeper level.

PJ is one of two bloggers I have met in real life. I also email/chat regularly with three people I met through my blog. Most of these relationships span over three years. Considering how important anonymity is for me as a blogger, this is quite a lot. Soon, I will be adding two more to the list, as I will be meeting The Girl is Goosed in Shanghai (and staying with her, in fact!) and hopefully meeting Nashe in Singapore.

These experiences, seeing someone make such a commitment to a total stranger, gives me faith in the human race. It also reaffirms my belief in the power of blogs. Blogging is not just for entertainment. When you share yourself truthfully with the world, the people who respond are ones who identify with you, regardless of background or context. And that can be a very powerful thing.

So I am very grateful to readers who comment, not just for the two-way communication, but because it leaves me in awe of the empathy and sympathy in this world.

Have you ever formed “real” friendships with readers of your blog or blogs that you read?

So I transferred my domain hosting today, from one Dreamhost account to another. I was in such a hurry to get it done (I’ve been putting it off for weeks) that I forgot to export my WordPress entries. So they’re gone.
I am crushed.

I deserve it, I mean I knew better. For some reason, the fact that I was transferring the domain within the same host gave me a misplaced sense of security such that I completely forgot the need to do a thorough backup.

Anyway, I have some entries saved in various places, so I will painstakingly try to reconstruct what entries I can. Your comments, however, are lost to the netherspace. My apologies.

Will get back to my regularly schedule blogging in a few clicks. Thank you for your cooperation.

Edit: I am a genius! Somehow, I managed to get all my entries and comments and pages and links back! Yes, it took a few hours of fiddling with SQL tables, but I did it! I am so impressed with myself right now, can you tell?

Recently, some of my favourite bloggers have gotten hitched¹. And while I’m 100% happy for them, I’m kind of feeling a little disappointed, because now my favourite blogs are going to turn into boring entries about life in the slow lane, a.k.a. married life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these girls will still tell wickedly funny stories about their lives as newlyweds, because let’s face it, these girls are bat-shit crazy and getting married doesn’t take that out of you.

But unfortunately there will be no more posts about bizarre men who date you via text messaging, or ask if they can pee on you halfway through intercourse, or cry to your mother every time you have an argument.
And as traumatic as some of these experiences are, you have to admit, there is a lot of entertainment value there.

So this is for all the single girls. Thank you for blogging, for sharing your hilarious (and often ridiculous) stories about life and love. Thank you for not giving up on finding love, despite experiences with a verifiable buffet of jerks, freaks, and mama’s boys. Thank you for sticking around on bad dates, thinking to yourself, “This will make great material for my blog!” Thank you for supporting each other through rough patches. I don’t think the rest of the people in our lives can understand how comforting it is to commiserate via blog with someone we have never met, but we get it. We get it.

To my married girl friends, you know I think you’re awesome and always will be. I may whine, but I will continue reading your blogs, as long as you don’t write entries on how your husband snores in bed. I have my limits.

1. Seriously, there’s been a sudden influx, what’s with that? Is it because it’s spring, mating season is here? [↩]

Edit: Congratulations to maxie and birdie, the winners of Package A and B respectively. I have contacted you by email. Thank you to everyone for participating and happy holidays!

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Below is an entry written by Ben for the 20-Something-Bloggers Blog Swap. You can find my blog entry on his blog here.

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Before I get started into talking at you, I feel I should introduce myself. My name is Ben, I live in the south of England and I am here today thanks to the wonderful blog swap instituted by 20SB. This is the third time I have taken part in such an event and I find it is a great way to discover new blogs and get to know the people behind them a little better. I usually write over here, and that is where you will find a post by SassyGirl (hence the ‘swap’). This is me (not at all drunk, honest):

I think that writing on someone else’s blog provides a good opportunity to get outside of your usual comfort zone, so I am going to do just that and attempt to talk about women, relationships and maybe even.. feelings. Obviously this can be touchy subject with a lot of men, as we tend to live by the rule that it is more convenient to pretend we don’t get emotional about things and that if we do, then the best course of action is to ignore it until it becomes impossible to live with. Now we all know that this strategy isn’t particularly effective and it tends to cause more trouble than its worth, but I guess most feel it is a case of better the devil you know. Personally I would like to think that I am a little more open than that, but I am still guilty of plenty of the above.

There are a few things you should know about me. Firstly I am single, and I have always been pretty happy being single. I’ve never been in what I’d call a ‘serious’ relationship, which at 24 sometimes feels a little strange. I guess I have always been comfortable in my own company, which I consider a positive thing (if you aren’t comfortable with yourself, how is another person really going to make that better?). I have also never been the type of person to actively pursue women, which I think is something I need to work on a bit. I have no intentions of becoming a sex pest, but I suspect I am generally a little too passive. If you have ever been in a bar and had a guy make eye contact with you across the room and smile, but then not come over and talk to you, then you probably know what I mean. I’m that guy.

Of course it doesn’t help that I have something of an aversion to small talk, unless I’m in particularly buoyant mood, in which case I’ll make idle chatter with pretty much anyone. Anyway, if you have ever lived in a university town as a student then you will probably know how asking the same questions over and over (where do you study? what do you study?) can get old quickly. That covers a lot of how I feel about small talk. Then there is the fact that trying hard not to come across as a complete ass often results in exactly that. There is nothing better than nervous energy for connecting the wrong part of your brain to your mouth. In some ways it is even worse to watch this happening to someone else than it is when it happens to you. I have actually physically pulled friends out of a conversation mid-sentence for this very reason. After a short explanation they have usually thanked me for my actions.

So to any women reading, if a guy approaches you and says something unbelievably stupid then consider that it was likely largely involuntary and was probably as big a surprise to him as it was to you. Try not to give him a look that gives him the impression he has just grown a second head. However, if he says something that makes him sound like a cocky douchebag, then I think you can take that at face value.

Oh, and if you see me in a bar and I smile at you, come and talk to me.

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Ladies, doesn’t Ben sound like a cutie? Leave him some love here.