Thinning of the herd. Filtering your friends list. The purge. Whatever you call it, most people are guilty of it. We haven’t talked to someone in a while so we periodically sift through our friends list and filter out those who are no longer present in our everyday lives.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with this practice, it is one that I refuse to be a part of. There are plenty of people on my Facebook friends list that I haven’t talked to [in real life] in years. For me, Facebook – and other forms of social media – serve as an easy way to re-connect with someone when out of the blue I’ve had a thought or dream about them, or they come across my news feed with a big life event, or when I’m traveling to their area and want to meet up or even just need advice on what to do there. Over the years there have been plenty of occasions I’ve been happy to have not weeded out those simply because they’re not currently in my everyday life.

At one point or another some set of circumstances led me to either send or accept a friend request and that’s enough for me to keep them there.

Earlier this year is a great example of why I am more than happy to keep people around on my friends list even if I haven’t actually seen them in years. A girl whom I attended DelVal with contacted me about coming to Alaska. She had spent a summer up here working at the SeaLife Center in Seward and wanted to return for spring break (she’s now a school teacher in NY). After a few weeks of messaging back and forth it was agreed upon that she was going to stay with Brian & I during her visit back and she booked her ticket to Alaska.  In my opinion, that takes some balls, but those are exactly the kind of people I like to have in my life.

We spent a week gallivanting around south central Alaska in an attempt to do as much as possible while she was here. Considering  she was only here for a few days & I never took any time off work, I think we did pretty well for ourselves. Thankfully, Sam likes taking photos as much as I do so we spent a lot of her trip taking pictures. Here are a few of my favorites:
 Thanks again for coming to visit Sam! It was great getting to reconnect with you and it’s always a treat to share my home with like minded individuals. I hope we can do this again in the future!