Connection

A natural part of growing up is making connections and networking. And despite being only nineteen, I've been finding myself making a whole bunch of these lately. Not to long ago I believed "having connections" was a poplite way of using people. Ever since Infinitus my thoughts on this matter have started to change. For example, going up to LA to see a wrock concert and driving back late at night just isn't a wise choice. Therefor, I use my "connections" in LA to stay the night at my friends house for free. While my trips to LA can really be boiled down to "just staying with friends", going to Disneyland yesterday seemed a little more on the connection side.

Some of the people I follow on twitter had some extra tickets that they didn't need so they were selling them at a discounted price. I of corse having wanted to go to Disney for ages, was excited to be able to A, afford a ticket and B, have a reason to talk my friends into going with me. In this case both parties benefited from this exchange, but I have to wonder about my values and how they have changed.

In the car ride up I was explaining how I got the tickets, my friend said, "Oh, I should hang out more with potter people they have connections." While this statement was said innocently enough, it got me thinking about the connections I do have. For the last two years I've been working hard at getting known in the Harry Potter fandom. I don't particularly want to be "fandom famous" or any of that complicated jazz. I just want to be more than yet another stalker fan. I always feel so awkward coming up to someone in a wizard rock band or who watch on youtube to saying hello. I feel like I know so much about them, yet they know absolutely nothing about me. So in order to change this, I try to put myself in the right place at the right time in order to have real conversations with these people I admire. Though, I must admit, most of it is sheer dumb luck. And weither it is because I've said the right things to the right people or just because I've made some freaking awesome friends, I seem to have connections all over the world. And for some reason, these connections and all this networking feels like I'm just making friends. Maybe it's not so bad after all.