Thankful for my friends

Last night, I started thinking about how grateful I am for my friends. wait I need to explain the picture! haha! While out doing a session for a friend of mine, two homeless guys came up and wanted me to take their picture. The funny thing is, this happens often to photographers shooting in urban areas. These guys seemed like good buddies, joking around as they walked up to us and having a good laugh about showing off their "guns." And I didn't want to do a post about my friends and not have a picture of every single one of them for the post, and thats impossible anyways as they are around the country and even a couple outside the country. And I am developing friendships with new folks all the time and catching up with old ones as well. There is no way I could even pay tribute to all of my friends in one post. I decided to resort to my new journaling habit and make a list of all the different reasons my friends are important to me.

1. My friends will drop everything for me if I need them to
2. They are very forgiving of my bad traits...very very forgiving
3. They listen to me vent
4. They listen to me brag
5. They listen to me
6. They are concerned for my well being
7. They chat with me late into the night/morning
8. They surprise me with kindness
9. They encourage me to do better
10. Some kick my butt verbally so I will do better
11. They challenge me, so that I can become a better person or be better educated
12. They trust me with their secrets
13. They trust me with their feelings and thoughts as well
14. They love me
15. They compliment me. heh heh

I haven't always had good friends, heck! I haven't always had friends. It occurred to me a few years ago that I wanted friends in my life and the only way for me to do that was to firstly let the universe know I was ready for friends, and secondly make some effort to let people into my life. It's been a little hard with a couple of burns and bad character judgements, but really worth it. The hardest part for me is to be a good friend back, I dont always call, go the extra mile, express my feelings, but I love my friends, I love the ones that are becoming better friends every time I talk to them, and I am open to new friends all the time.