THE STATS

Activity: Making New Friends

Where: My House (don’t be upset, there’s an explanation!!)

Cost: Nothing…well unless you include the bottle of wine ($16)

The Story: So, we had a bit of a change of plans this week! My partner in crime for Thursday’s activity wasn’t feeling well, so she had to cancel our date. To be honest, I could have gone and done the activity on my own, but I just didn’t feel like I could brave the world of salsa dancing alone yet. This left me in a bit of a conundrum – what would my activity for this week be? I can’t miss a week – it’s only week 3! So I reflected on what ended up happening on Thursday night after we abandoned salsa dancing lessons, and thought you know what, this was actually a HUGE deal and can totally count as this week’s activity!

So after finding out that my friend wasn’t up to dancing, I ran into my neighbour outside and she asked if I’d have a glass of wine on the porch with her. I’m not going to lie, the hermit in me was saying NO THANKS, but I really like this gal and felt like it would be a good opportunity to spend some time getting to know her. Our house (we live in a quadplex) has an amazing front porch, so we hunkered down, got out the wine glasses and started chatting. What I’m always amazed by in these situations is how the universe brings us together with people when the timing is just right. My new friend is going through a bit of a struggle, and we were able to spend quite a bit of time chatting through it, and learning more about each other. We share a love of gemstones, and their healing powers, and other fun supernatural things like tarot. She ran downstairs and came up with her tarot and gypsy decks to read my cards (which was so exciting for me because I LOVE this stuff), and so we started the reading by flashlight as we popped open wine bottle #2. My reading was incredibly accurate – lots of advice about how not to rush the healing process of my marriage break-up, and to keep hoping for amazing things in the future…she reads from 2 different decks, and they both had a lot to say about dealing with grief…they also said I’m in an amazingly creative state right now, and should continue to explore that (helloooooooo, blog!!). It was such a gift to have that reading, and an experience I won’t soon forget 🙂

As the night progressed we crossed paths with both the main floor neighbours (and owners) of our home (who brought us out bowls of homemade thai food), as well as the 2nd floor tenant; my new friend’s pseudo-father stopped by and I got to learn about him and their relationship (and his super cute pup), and then my friend stopped by to join the party! Finally, at about 1am, our next door neighbour popped over to join us too. I feel like I need to write about this in such great detail because I can’t stop but think about how many people I met that night who will bring different things to my life in the coming months as I get comfortable in my new place. We were out there on the porch until 3am and in that time, I encountered 8 people, any of whom could play an influencing role in my life moving forward. That one little ‘yes’ turned into such a fun and unexpected night, and I can’t help but think that maybe I just wasn’t meant to learn how to salsa dance that night, but rather experience life as someone who says YES instead of NO THANK YOU! It’s so easy to live inside our shells, and to maintain friendships we already have, but there is such a joy in meeting new people that cannot be experienced by living in our own personal hermit caves. So if nothing else, I implore you to think about saying yes the next time you really want to say no, and see what happens – you never know who you’re going to meet, or how they’re going to change your life! Til next week…XO