My friend Laurel is awesome.
Why? Well, first, she's just awesome in her own right. She's whip-smart, does a supercomplicated technical, sciencey (sure, it's a word) thing for her job. She's an athlete (a runner). She's a sex-positive person who embraces all her interesting differences with gusto. Some of those include being bisexual, kinky, polyamorous, and an ageplayer.
Then there's that thing about being a little dead girl.
Image courtesy of http://abisszombie.deviantart.com/art/the-cute-little-dead-girl-290231321. Thanks!
She talked all about that way back in episode 26 of the Big Little Podcast. You should check it out. She was awesome.
But all of that aside, that's not why she's my gratitude today.
Laurel is my thoughtful friend. She's thinky, both about things-in-general, and sometimes about me-in-particular. Every once in a while she pings me and lets me know that I'm on her mind, that she misses me, or that something I've said or done really means a lot to her.
Well, that means a lot to me.
Sometimes I feel that the kind of navel-gazing I do here in my blog is just so much blather into the aether, and that it's self-serving. I never want it to come off that way. I spend a lot of time thinking, and like sharing it. I do it not because I'm some guru know-it-all. Rather, it's the opposite. I want to use my own struggles to teach others while I learn from them at the same time. We're all each other's student, and teacher.
Laurel totally lets me know that she gets that. She teaches me stuff all the time. She learns from me too. Our friendship is so valuable to me. I'm grateful for her.
Because, like I said... she's awesome.