Friends are the family we choose. Just like our families, their influence on our lives, and how we perceive and interact with the world is vast. It could even be argued that because we choose each other, who we befriend may influence us and say something about us even more than our families.
I really believe you are the company you keep and you have to surround yourself with people who lift you up because the world knocks you down.
– Maria Shriver
I always learn so much about myself when I write about my friends. What traits do all my friends have in common? Why do I (subconsciously) seek out those traits in my friendships? There is so much self-knowledge to mine in considering friendships. What kind of friend am I?
Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them and it will change your life.
– Amy Poehler
Writing helps us understand concepts and even our own motivations on a deeper level. Prompts help us focus the writing. These journaling and writing prompts about friendship will help you delve deeper into the nature of your friendships, and why those relationships, and those people, are so important to you.
A friend is someone who give you total freedom to be yourself.
– Jim Morrison
15 Journaling / Writing Prompts about Friendship
1. Write about a group of people that leave you feeling happy and at ease after you’ve spend time with them.
2. If you were having a rotten day, who is the first person you would want to talk to? And why?
3. Describe some traditions you’ve had with your friends.
4. Are you comfortable asking your friends for help when you need it? Would they ask you for help?
5. Do you have a friend you haven’t seen in years, but you’re sure if you saw them, you’d pick right up where you left off?
6. What is something nice a friend said to you that meant the world to you?
7. Is there someone you’ve been missing, but you haven’t reached out to contact them? What keeps you from reaching out?
8. How would you like to be described to others by your friends?
9. Have you ever lost a friend? Been unfriended? What happened?
10. Who has always been there for you, no matter what, through thick and thin?
11. Describe in detail someone who means the world to you. Include appearance, mannerisms, personality, quirks… everything that makes them who they are.
12. What do you believe are the most important qualities in a friend?
13. Have you made any new friends in recent years? How does the process of making friends feel different from when you were younger?
14. who are the people in my life with whom I feel the most like myself?
15. Make a list of all the people who have helped you in your life. Keep adding to this list as you think of more.
What other prompts or questions would you add to this list? I’d love to hear your suggestions, and I’m always trying to improve on my lists of prompts.
If you enjoyed this list of journaling / writing prompts, check out my Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feeds for daily prompts and other inspiration.
The first thing that struck me at WordCamp Seattle was the inclusive sense of community. People from all walks of life, hobby bloggers and coders, grandmas, hairdressers, and hackers, came together to discuss WordPress, how to use it, and how to improve it. People were so friendly, no snobbery, no cliques, no standoffishness…
I have attended small scale blog conferences before, but this was the first time to attend an event of this kind for me.
What is WordCamp?
WordCamps are non-profit conferences that are organized and run entirely by volunteers. No need to break the bank on wardrobe or ticket prices. This is definitely a come as you are event – be yourself, no one is there to see your shoes – and the amazingly low ticket price of $20 is offset by the many sponsors who make these conferences possible. I spent some time speaking to reps from the sponsors, and these people really get the community focus of WordCamp, and WordPress as a whole.
Nearly 700 people converged on the HUB at the University of Washington for WordCamp Seattle this year. It was huge, and so well run. There were panels for rank beginners and seasoned developers, and everyone in between.
So many useful sessions
The schedule was packed, so many talks from which to choose! Here are the sessions I attended (slides used by the presenters linked below):
So many great talks, and of course, there were four different talks going through most of the sessions. But the slide shows and video of the events has been made public, so you can see what you missed at a later date. A note about the videos, there is one long video for each of the three rooms that covers all of the talks that took place in the room, so get yourself a really big cup of coffee before sitting down to watch.
This conference was just so rich with useful information and resources that two weeks later I am still processing everything in my head.
But that was just day one. Day two upped the community aspect in a completely different way…
Contributors Day
I wasn’t really sure what they meant by Contributors Day, but it turns out they take the community built and open source aspects of WordPress pretty seriously.
Contributors day took place in a smaller shared workspace called the Impact Hub Seattle in Pioneer Square. Participants gathered together to  contribute to the WordPress product. The group divided into teams to work on everything from documentation to help desk questions, to directly addressing bugs, to working on updates. No need to have advanced programming skills. People contribute as they are able to, and there is place for everyone who wants to participate.
Mind.
Blown.
OK, so obviously, I’m new to the world of open source, but the more I learn, the more I want to learn. I’ve been using WordPress since 2008, but until now, I never bothered to learn much about how it was built. Now that I’ve seen that process in action, I want more.
I love this world I stumbled into.
WordPress Meetups
I learned that there are regular WordPress Meetups here in Seattle (also, around the world for those of you not in Seattle). I will be checking these out, so look for me at a Seattle WordPress Meetup soon.
I’ve had a little practice with change management – those changes that are planned months and years in advance, those changes that come out of nowhere and leave you off balance with your head spinning, and those little gradual changes that sneak up on you, and one day you realize your baby is half your height, and has opinions that are very much all her own.
The best parts of my life came about through change, as did the worst. I’ve been thinking about my attraction/repulsion response to change – sometimes both sensations at the same time in regards to the same issue.
CoffeeJitters has been a single girl making her way in the world blog, a wedding blog, an infertility blog, a photography blog, a quitting my job and going back to school full time blog, a wow! I’m pregnant! blog, a mommy blog, a cancer blog, and a relearning how to dream after cancer blog.
I’m still trying to relearn how to dream after cancer. It’s surprising how much imagination and willpower it takes to re-imagine your future after this kind of diagnosis. But, now I’ve moved on a little, from dreaming to planning, and even doing. Baby steps, people.
This blog is my story, my life, and mostly, a very public love letter to my husband and daughter. If you’d like to read more, here are a few of my favorites to get you started:
People ask me what my blog is about, and every time I pause. I know I’m supposed to have an elevator speech prepared, I guess it’s time I start thinking about that.
This blog has been through so many iterations. I started the first CoffeeJitters blog on LiveJournal back in 2001. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than ten years since that first blog post. A lot has changed over that decade.
CoffeeJitters has been a single girl making her way in the world blog, a wedding blog, an infertility blog, a photography blog, a quitting my job and going back to school full time blog, a wow! I’m pregnant! blog, a mommy blog, a cancer blog, and a relearning how to dream after cancer blog.
Mostly, it’s a love letter to my daughter and husband, and an ongoing autobiography. It is my story, and my practice honing my voice. It is my chance to be heard.
I think in a way, that’s what a lot of us bloggers are doing. I keep picturing all the bloggers of the world at their computers furiously typing away in a clackity-clack version of the Whos that Horton heard, yelling at the top of their lungs, “We Exist!”
Blogging allows us to make our mark on the world. To show that we exist. To have a voice and have it heard. To contribute to the ongoing story of the human race.
My studies recently have centered a great deal around women’s history throughout the world, and the difficulty involved in truly understanding what a woman’s life was like. Mens stories were recorded, by men. Women’s stories… not so much.
I look at blogging in comparison to that and I think: what a gift we are leaving for future generations. Is there any comparable resource in history to the wide range of women’s stories now available? Sure, there’s a good deal of exaggeration. That also exists in our history books. But there is so much more variety of stories and lifestyles represented. I’m proud to be a part of this movement. I’m so happy that future generations will have such a wealth of information about their ancestors – us. (On second thought, maybe I’d better go clean up a few of my posts)
This is where I do the very important work of blogging about being a mom. I know. You want to be like me when you grow up, don’t you?
I even have an intern.
Let me tell you, for an unpaid intern she’s quite expensive and high maintenance. She expects a meal, several meals, every day. I’d say something about her expecting me to wipe her butt, but that would be crude.
This is the kind of meal I prepare for my crew every day.
Ok, that’s not true. That’s the kind of food I intend to cook every day.
This is more like the kind of food I prepare for our meals.
Well, no, that’s not true either. That is the kind of food I would like to eat, and it implies I actually cook. In reality, I serve freezer lasagna, macaroni and cheese, and anything else that requires less than 5 minutes of time and effort on my part.
So much for being a food blogger.
These are my blogging pants.
What? You don’t match your intern to your pants?
Yes, she was taking yet another break. But she does contribute a lot to our team.
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