An entry about people that I didn’t meet online!

I actually have time to write an entry today and I’m not falling asleep, so maybe this will be a little more heartfelt than, er, all my other MaJoMo entries.

Reevaluating my somewhat contradictory claims over the last two entries of “I think I get to know people way better online and have much more in-depth relationships, but I also think it’s ridiculous to join an online dating site” I think that OD makes a big difference. All of my online friendships that I’ve developed outside of OD have been very ordinary and very much what my real-life interactions are like. I’ve never developed much of a friendship with anybody who randomly messaged me, or who I met from a dating site. Meanwhile, I absolutely adore the vast majority of people I interact with on Open Diary and have developed rather deep bonds with those that I’ve pursued closer relationships with. I figure this is because of a combination of two reasons: 1) It gives you a sort of inherent closeness to people when you read a diary of their lives and 2) I naturally get on well with the sort of people who write diaries.

Anyway, I think I’m going to shut up about all that and ramble about my actual life a bit. As detailed earlier, I’ve been completely swamped with schoolwork lately, but the minor plus side of this is that a large portion of the schoolwork is actually groupwork, meaning I do manage to get a bit of sociality from it. My primary two groupmembers at the moment are my tax research partners, Michael and Channa.

Michael is a bit of a fun story – it turns out he only lives a few minutes away from my parents’ farm in Wrightsville. I’d never met him before we happened to get paired up for a tax research project – I noticed we had the same area code and looked him up on facebook and saw we had tons of friends in common. It’s somewhat astonishing that I’d come across a random person from Wrightsville while at UGA – I realize it doesn’t seem like much of a big deal on here, but most of you likely don’t realize the environment of the rural south and how Michael is probably only one of a handful of people in Wrightsville who has the academic credentials to make it to grad school at UGA. At any rate, he is the typical “good ole’ southern boy” only with a bit more intelligence. He likes to hunt and fish and ride his 4-wheeler, which means we don’t have too much in common other than geographics. But I’ll always have an affinity for the southern culture, and I can’t help but love anyone that’s from Wrightsville and has managed to make it to UGA grad school.

Channa doesn’t provide as interesting of a story, but is probably a more interesting person. She’s non-religious (Michael is a devout Christian, of course) and likes to read and seems like the sort of person who would be a good fit for me if you just listed her interests or read her facebook profile. I’m not particularly attracted to her though, and I certainly don’t get the indication that she’s attracted to me, so there isn’t anything going on there. She’s a bit socially nervous and she amusingly heightens every awkward moment that occurs by pointing it out. It’s somewhat endearing. Right, now I’m going to get tons of notes implying that I’m attracted to her, when I’m really not! I wouldn’t have even mentioned her, but I’m supposed to be updating my diary every day!

Anyway, the three of us have sorta become relatively good friends, as we actually take breaks from our groupwork and have dinner downtown and such. I realize that this isn’t exactly a big deal, but in the past whenever my groups took breaks we all just went our separate ways. It’s nice to have a bit of a sense of unity and friendship.

And I’ll end today’s MaJoMo entry on that cheerful note.