Community

When I started this blog over four years ago, I thought I knew what I was getting into. It was going to be a place for me to show and tell about the things I made, to keep a record of all my creative pursuits.  That was it. An online space for me to journal my comings and goings and makings.

I had it all wrong.

I'm not saying that this blog isn't a record of my creations and doings.  It is.  But House on Hill Road has opened up a world to me that I didn't know existed.  I'm talking about the community of blogging - the relationships I've made with people I wouldn't know if it weren't for my little slice of the internet.  How I connected with these people is a bit of a mystery still, but the connections are solid, built on common ground.  It's hard to explain this to people who don't blog.  In fact, Fatty did not understand it for a very long time despite my efforts at explaining it to him.  But when you are in the thick of it, or perhaps, in Fatty's case, when you witness those connections face to face, it's immediately apparent that these friendships are real and valid and important.  That my "blog friends" are more than people I correspond with via the internet.  They are my friends, plain and simple.

Getting to spend the weekend with six of my friends was an incredible blessing.  We talked and laughed, supported and cheered.  It was comfortable and comforting, seeing these amazing women all in the same room, laughing with each other and taking photograph after photograph.  The houses were cozy and familar and the personalities just as I had imagined. We shared stories and told tales, celebrated a book and its author and photographer.  We saw art and learned from an expert.  We ate great meals and traded gifts. It was all I had hoped for and then more still.

That's the thing about good friends.  They rarely disappoint.  And mine blew my expectations away.

Yes. Thankful. I am.