52 New Friends

It was a beautiful evening in downtown Mesa.   Spring was just starting to melt into the heat of the summer.   I’d been invited to the Mesa Arts Center for their Season Preview, a rather exclusive event.   When I entered the theater, I had to take a moment to adjust my perception.   A group of round tables covered in white tablecloths were gathered onto the stage.   A flamingo dancer was performing to the sound of a solitary guitar.   I was in awe as I made my way up onto the stage, as if I were entering into the performance, itself.   I was standing in line for the buffet when someone from the Mesa Arts Center introduced Christine to me.   We both work in the same industry and had come to the event alone.   I’m sure it seemed like an easy pairing…and it was.   While we waited in the lengthy line, Christine told me she had only been in Phoenix for the past two and a half months.   She was working in San Diego when the oppo...

Charley has always been good at figuring things out. He was once traveling to Roswell, New Mexico.   His flight landed after the sun had set.   He rented a car and while driving down the long, narrow road into Roswell, he saw a mysterious glow in the sky that seemed to be following him.   Anyone that knows anything about Roswell, New Mexico might think that Charley was experiencing a U.F.O.   But Charley doesn’t believe in such things.   He kept studying the eerie orb from his vantage point behind the steering wheel, wondering what exactly it could be.   When he finally reached the town, itself, he realized the glow was actually the city’s lights being reflected off the low-hanging mist.   The slight curvature of road he was traveling gave the impression that the lights were following him.   I asked him if he believed that this may have been the cause of a lot of U.F.O. sightings in the Roswell area.   And he said, ‘yes’. While in R...

People are fascinating to me.   Every time I sit down with someone new, I never know what to expect and the conversation always seems to take on a life of its own.   I met Shawn through a friend of mine who happens to be her hairstylist.   The three of us had hung out once before but this is the first time she and I had met one-on-one.   Some people you greet with a handshake because you can feel the emotional distance.   That’s normal.   Occasionally, you run into someone you immediately feel enough closeness with that a hug seems more appropriate.   And every now and then, you will run into someone you feel like you can immediately share your innermost secrets with.   A sort of love at first sight, I guess.   That’s how Shawn was for me.   Maybe with her infectious smile and warm personality, she’s like that for everyone.   It was how she met her husband. Immediately, we fell into a conversation of all the things we, ...

My friend, Katie, was getting married.   At the end of March, she sent me at text that read:   “What is the name of your plus one?   We are doing the place cards and need to know.” I read the text like a deer in headlights.   Six months ago when I RSVP’d, I had a debate on whether or not to mark the plus one box.   I had decided to air on the side of optimism and I marked the box.   Six months later, and still single, I had no idea who I was going to bring.   “Well…” I stammered over text.   “I thought I still had some time.” “Well…”   Katie texted back.   “We are less than a month out now.   Soooo…we probably need to know…” I looked up at the sky and wiped both my palms all the way down my face….as if that was going to make me feel any better.   “I have an idea,” I texted back.   “You are the bride so tell me if this is going to ruin your wedding…but what if we put on the place card ‘Mystery Date’?   An...

Ben grew up in a Mormon family.   He and his twin sister were the middle children out of six.   Ben did all the things that good Mormon boys do.   When he was of age, he went on his mission.   He came back and got married.   He and his wife had three children who were perfectly planned exactly two years apart from one another.   Ben followed the scriptures.   He studied at night to get his bachelor’s degree online…and then his masters.   He was well liked among his fellow Mormons.   He was well liked by everyone.   So when Ben was asked to be a leader in his church, he graciously took the position.   It was a great honor. But one day, Ben consciously had a thought that should never have entered his religiously conditioned brain.   As devote as he and his family were to prayer and the scriptures, he could not find the answer to his prayers anywhere in his everyday life.   Ben didn’t voice this thought…but it was the...

This past Sunday, I attended an inspiring talk at ASU about the Power of Passion.   It’s an interesting topic and as I listened to each speaker, I realized living life is my passion.   You never know what it’s going to bring!   In the past, I have felt sorry for the generations that come behind me.   So many people talk about how the millennials and generation z are failing.   I’ve read articles about how technology has not prepared these generations for hard work…or life, in general.   It’s as if these generations lack passion.   And then, when I least expect it, my job takes me a direction that allows me to meet people in their twenties who have learned to harness their passion and succeed. Unfortunately, both of these people I’ve had the privilege to get to know live in the public eye, so to keep them anonymous I am going to call them ‘Ann’ and ‘Andy’. ‘Ann’ is a twenty-eight-year-old real estate agent.   She was on her way to get her...

There are old souls that inhabit the earth, beings of youth who exhibit such natural wisdom that one starts to wonder if they really even fit in this generation of selfies and YouTube makeup tutorials.   I met Sarah by working with a local non-profit.   She is the type of unyielding dependable that you never have to worry about anything being left undone.   She’s a little bit of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ with her long, blond hair and her natural heart-shaped face.   Her voice is soft.   Her eyes are warm.   She’s the type of person you instantly feel you have known for years. You’d think she was from the Midwest from that description but Sarah actually grew up near Buffalo, New York, surrounded by farms for as far as the eye could see.   She loved to ride horses.   In fact, for a while, she considered becoming a horse trainer but she never had a horse of her own.   She was raised by a single mom and horses are expensive.   ...

Dear Friends, I need to catch you up on all that has happened over the last month since my last posting.   You may have thought I have given up on the idea of making 52 new friends this year.   That could not be farther from the truth.   But here’s what I have learned:   As I get deeper and deeper into this process, I find people are reluctant to sit down with me.   I’ve got a backlog six or seven deep of women who liked the idea enough to agree to sit down with me, but, for one reason or another, have not made the time to do it.   Part of me has been in mourning over it because how sad is our society that people are so overtaxed that they don’t even have time to schedule in one hour to talk about themselves and meet a new friend.   Or maybe the idea of having someone write about them is too daunting?   Or maybe they just don’t want to be my friend and don’t know how to tell me?   Or maybe something else is holding them back?   ...

Strength comes in many different forms.   Amanda was a starry-eyed ASU freshman when a friend of hers asked her to go on a church trip to San Diego.   Even though Amanda had never been particularly religious, a trip to San Diego sounded pretty good to her.   It was on that trip that she met the man she would eventually marry.   He was Russian, here in Arizona on a work visa.   He was fourteen-years her elder and he was deliciously exotic.   Unfortunately, this isn’t a love story. Amanda’s Russian admitted he was really only interested in the church so he could meet girls.   Amanda is a brassy, no-nonsense New Yorker so I doubt she was ever naïve…but at the time, she was young and she didn’t really recognize the power the age difference would hold over her.   She dated her Russian on and off for four years and then when she was twenty-one and nearing her college graduation, she found out she was pregnant.   She had wanted to go...

When I first set out on this meeting-new-people adventure, one of my friends came to me and said, “I want you to sit down with Sandy…but she is about to go undergo surgery for breast cancer.   Can you wait a couple of months?” Of course, I could wait.   I wanted to know what it was like to be hit with the heavy weight of a cancer diagnosis.   I had heard that Sandy was doing much better now so when I sat down with her in a Starbucks on a chilly Sunday morning, my first question was ripped right out of an old Tim McGraw song:   “How does it hit you when you get that kind of news?” I was prepared for earth shattering trauma but Sandy just shrugged and said, “I’m seventy.   Things like that are to be expected.”   In a shockingly honest display of her own mortality, Sandy went on to explain that she realizes she is probably closer to the end of her life than the beginning.   And while the burning sensation in her arms is annoying and the hair ...

I did it.   I did the thing I said I was not going to do.   I don’t know if it was because Valentine’s Day was coming up.   Maybe I just ran into one too many happy couples…but the old, lonely hole opened up in my heart reminding me I’m a single.   And then I got the itch to want to shop the dating sites.   I tried to resist.   For hours, I begged the television to entertain me but the pull was just too great.   I’d done a very good job at deleting all of my information on the dating sites so I didn’t have access.   It took some work to put up a new profile with no photo, no description, just meant to look, but moments into the process I realized…I wasn’t missing much.   I was just about to log out when I noticed someone had sent me a message.   It was harmless enough, just a question about the screen name I chose.   I looked at his profile.   It said he was open to making new friends so I figured…why not?   Here...

My condo complex had our annual board meeting last weekend out by the pool.   I know it’s February but this is Phoenix, folks, so it was seventy degrees.   When I arrived, there was a small gathering of homeowners milling around the donuts and coffee.   Most of the people had brought lawn chairs.   I plopped mine next to a dark haired woman and said, “Mind if I sit next to you?”   And that’s how I met Sherrie.   In the short time before the meeting, I found out Sherrie was from Canada, she only lives here during the winter months, and she and her husband own a bunch of businesses in Canada.   Once the meeting got under way, I realized Sherrie knew a lot of people in my complex.   Apparently, she and her husband are well established in spending the winter months here.   We call those people snowbirds in Phoenix and as the meeting droned on, I thought:   I don’t know any snowbirds.   The purpose of this blog is to meet people w...

The interesting thing I’ve learned about meeting a person for the first time is that it usually only allows you to see them in the current moment.   Whether the observer is aware of it or not, the other person’s reality is colored by what is going on in their life, whether it’s happy or sad or chaotic or nostalgic.   If you listen closely the subconscious is drifting to whatever is at the forefront of their mind, and in a way the words passing through their lips are the reflection of their subconscious.   Typically, there is a common theme that presents itself but no one’s life is comprised of just one theme.   We are all made up of different parts, feelings, moods and stages of life.   Our lives are a jigsaw puzzle of opposites that give our reality depth instead of reading as one flat character on a page.   In the moment, we all typically wear just one mask to show the world, but sometimes, you find a rare person who will throw all the masks on at on...