Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great Monday and a great start to the month of October! (best month ever). On Sunday I had a great end to the month of September – Blogger Book Club!
I created a Chicago Healthy Living Blogger facebook group a couple months ago and from that have stemmed many meet-ups, including our blogger book club! Last month we were hosted by Kelsey and read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This month, Erin offered to host. The book choice? MWF Seeking BFF! I hadn’t ever heard of it until we chose the book but it sounded interesting: a New York native moves to Chicago with her husband only to realize 2 years later that she has no close friends in the city. She goes on a year long hunt for a new BFF using every method in the book! Haha sounded like me, so I was definitely interested.
I actually really loved this book. Not only did it have great information about friendship, but it actually gave me some great tips and ideas. One thing that I loved is throughout the book, the author cites to research that she’s found about friendship, giving information on how people form relationships and why women need relationships with other women. Personally I found it all really interesting. She also talks about how she learned to be better at making friends, how she became a more open and talkative person and also how the whole journey made her a more confident and independent person. Because she went out on her own to several events, she found herself being more independent, doing things she would have normally been too nervous to do on her own.
The advice that I got from the book on making friends can be summed up in these simple tips:
1) It takes EFFORT. Follow up with people, get their phone numbers, don’t just say “we should get together sometime” and then never do anything about it.
2) Say yes. Whenever you get invited to things say yes, and you will get invited to more and more things. The more you say no, the less other invitations will come your way.
3) Don’t be embarrassed. Most people think that if you say “I need friends” then you must be sad and lonely. Why is it okay to say “I’m looking for a man” but not “I’m looking for friends?” Most women would welcome new friendships into their lives and many are in the same circumstances: new to a city and in need of new friends.
4) Don’t expect to find the same kind of friends you’ve had growing up. You can’t replicate the friendship you have with the girls you’ve known since kindergarten. It’s okay to have different kinds of friends, some really close, some you’d just call up for brunch or a fun event you heard about.
It was also great to read a book based in Chicago – I’m definitely going back through and writing down some of the places she went because some sounded pretty cool! Haha probably not going to sign up for “Rent-A-Friend” though…
To discuss the book (and to just hang out and drink wine…) we all met up at Erin’s apartment and had a delicious spread of food. I love these book club meet ups and have definitely learned to expect to be there for the entire afternoon! We can’t ever stop talking.
photo collage stolen from Kelsey
And, shhhh, don’t tell them, but I totally want to go on some more “friend dates” with many of these girls.
Have you ever put in effort in making new friends?
Do you live somewhere new, or in a place where you have all your friends from high school or college?