Nina: 0:06

Welcome to another episode of Dear Nina Conversations About Friendship. So most of my episodes are conversations with other people, based on conversations I’m having out in the world, that people are contacting me about that. I’m contacting other people about that happened in my real life. That happened not in my real life because somebody has pitched me with an idea. If you ever want to pitch an idea for the show, I do have a way to do that and really the easiest is just to Google, dear Nina, pitching Guidelines. That will bring you to the right page because, honestly, I can’t remember the address right now to tell you, but Google will get you there quickly. Dear Nina, pitching Guidelines, that’s what you should look up.

Nina: 0:51

I wanted to talk today with a solo episode. That is what I was getting at. Is that this one is really just a conversation between me and you, the listeners? I want to talk about spending the time and in some cases, yes, it’s also going to be money to see your out of town friends. I really was lucky this summer to well you know what. No, I wasn’t just lucky. I made it a priority to spend the time and money to see some out of town friends and I was able to actually do it in the same place. So, meaning I took one trip, but I was able to see two kinds of friends on this trip. I’ll start with my college friends. There are two college friends Rebecca and Julie shout out to both of them who I had not spent time with in person in quite a while, and they came to my dad’s funeral in December of 2021. It was amazing to me that they came. One lives in New York, one lives in the suburbs of Maryland. They dropped everything that they had going on and they showed up for the day to be at the funeral, and that meant we really didn’t get to spend any time together, of course, because that’s just how it is. I mean, you are not in a position where you can be socializing. They were there just like to be there as a gesture of friendship.

Nina: 2:09

It really meant a lot to me and I said girls, we have got to take a trip together. We cannot just see each other for this kind of last minute thing, and even when it’s for a happy family events bar and bat mitzvahs, in our case, where the three of us are all Jewish, or if you’re going to someone’s wedding or any kind of event you’re going to for a friend, you still don’t get to spend a lot of time with that person. Even when it’s a happy event because they’re surrounded by tons of friends and family, it’s just too hard. So even in those cases, a lot of times you’re there as a gesture of friendship, when you can make it work which, by the way, is hard long distance. And being there for the rough times is hard, long distance and being there for the happy times. We all have lots going on and it takes a lot of, again, time and money to be there for these things. But I said, let’s not have an experience together where we are sharing it with tons of other friends and family. Let’s take a trip.

Nina: 3:01

So we decided to plan a trip with our husbands. It took us a while to get it together because, life right, there was a lot of texting about dates. I really prefer to do that kind of planning on email, which I mentioned to Gretchen Rubin in episode 57 when she and I for some reason that wasn’t really the topic of the show we were talking about her book Life in Five Senses and not sure how that came up, but it did, and I had Julie and Rebecca in mind when I was mentioning that I have friends who really prefer to plan on text. Actually, I think Julie could go either way. Rebecca wanted to do it on text. I’m really an email person, but we kind of switched back and forth, which was probably the worst option of all because we had some information on text and some on email.

Nina: 3:42

Through all this communication we figured out, by narrowing down dates, when we could go, and then we had to figure out where. Where do we want to go? We thought it would be fun to go somewhere on the West Coast. Well, for Minneapolis there are only certain places that you could fly direct. There was really nowhere in Wyoming or Montana we could go without having to take a second flight. And we were just talking about a three-day trip. We decided we’d fly into Denver and get ourselves to Boulder. We didn’t even do that much planning. Really in hindsight, we all kind of divided it up, and what is beautiful about the way this worked? The three of us don’t travel together almost ever and we just were able to each take on a heavier role when necessary.

Nina: 4:24

When we first started talking about planning this trip, rebecca had her twins, bene Mitzvah, coming up, and she had another trip too, coming up before ours. She just wasn’t going to be able to take on the heavy lifting. I kind of went ahead and looked for hotels and kind of decided on a hotel for us and took the lead on that and I pushed them to book their tickets. I was like, all right, guys, we’re going to do this, let’s do it. But then, at different times, julie and Rebecca took on different parts of the planning. Towards the end, rebecca really took on like okay, where are we going to hike? Which hike should we do? And we got a lot of advice too from my friend, pam, who lives there. But we’re going to get to Pam in a moment, because she’s actually a big part of this story, of this episode too, about traveling to visit friends. This isn’t going to be like a big, long, huge episode.

Nina: 5:11

I’m just here to tell you that it takes planning, it takes time, it takes a lot of commitment. Seeing your out of town friends and person really is important. It doesn’t have to be all the time, it doesn’t have to be an annual trip. I think actually an annual trip would be very hard. I know there are people who do that and that’s incredible, but I also think it’s important if you have a significant other to spend some time with that person. I think it’s great if you can take the kids places. That’s wonderful too. Most people cannot do all these trips. That’s a lot of trips. If you are single and you have lots of different friends you want to be visiting or doing trips with, you have to prioritize who you’re doing those trips with you know every once in a while. I also think it’s great if possible. I mean, it’s really cool to be able to travel with your in-town friends too, because that brings that friendship into a different kind of atmosphere.

Nina: 6:01

It’s nice to be on location. It’s like those shows when we used to watch the Brady Bunch on location in Hawaii. I’ve not been to Hawaii with friends. That would be very fantastic. But I’m just harkening back to those days when we had those special episodes of beloved shows where we’d get to see the cast that we’ve gotten to know so well in a new location. That’s what it’s like with your in-town friends. But those out-of-town friends, if you never ever see them, it’s forever phone, facetime, text, email, and it can get a little stuck there.

Nina: 6:34

So even if you only could see these people every five years, I may even say every 10 years. I know that’s a long time. That’s the reality. I have friends who I would love to see in person college friends, high school friends who I have not traveled with in a long time, and you know who you are. If you are listening to this and we’ve talked about we’re going to see each other and we will. I actually really believe we will. I mean it when I say it. I know that they mean it when they say it, and it may not be this year. This year I have a kid taking a gap year out of the country. I’m going to see him twice with my husband. So you know, I don’t know that we’re gonna be doing any other trips besides those two trips. That’s a lot right there. So I might have to wait another year to see those other friends. That’s just how it goes, and then they have things in their lives.

Nina: 7:19

But what I’m trying to say is it is important we cannot just rely on email, text, facetime, social media to connect deeply. Those are all great ways to connect and they are 1000% better than nothing. It is not the same and I don’t believe anyone who says it is the same, and I’m not sure anyone actually even does. I think most people would agree that being in person is an extra special kind of connection. So I just would not give up on planning these kinds of things, even if they’re two years out, three years out, even if it takes a feat of figuring out childcare or getting time off from work. You know, whatever the obstacles are saving money. Study after study shows, books come out constantly just showing that one of the top things that brings happiness to people that is part of longevity even is social connection.

Nina: 8:18

Part two here is that I stayed two extra days. Brian, my husband, went back home take care of the one child that we still had at home. Other kids were away on different summer plans. Rebecca and Julie went back with their husbands to New York and Maryland, and I stayed two extra nights to spend time with Pam Moore, who I have never met in person. I have been online friends with Pam Moore for, we think, maybe a decade. It’s pretty incredible, and even though I said about two minutes ago and I mean it that you cannot connect the same online social media, email, text, phone as you can in person, which I still believe it is a connection, and especially in in a time when, like our friendships, context was online. We were both bloggers, writers, freelance writers. We kind of became freelance writers around the same time. She really took it to the next level writing for places Washington Post, another huge outlet, which is great. And she took on a health beat. She’s so great at pitching editors and Pam actually sells an ebook on how to pitch editors. She’s had so much success. I’ll put that in the show notes.

Nina: 9:31

Pam has been on two episodes and Pam is the one who encouraged me to start a podcast. For many years I felt that my friendship advice column would lend itself really well to a podcast, but I was scared of all the technology that it was going to take. It’s hard to take on a whole new skill and everything that was going to be involved. And Pam started a podcast called the Real Fit Podcast and she really pushed me. She’s like Nina, you can do this, I did it, you can do it. She’s just been a fantastic encouraging friend. She’s so smart. We talk on the phone a lot, a lot of times through WhatsApp, through voice memos, because that’s the nature of our lives. So 10 years, that’s a long time to be talking to someone without meeting them. And I meant to say earlier I think I started to and probably interrupted myself.

Nina: 10:16

Pam was first on episode three. We talked about the friend who does not initiate contact, not because she is that friend, but because I thought she’d be a fun guest and she is. That’s one of my most listened to episodes. Number three it’s a great topic about just kind of being tired of always being the friend that reaches out. And then she was on episode 44, which was more in her topic, wheelhouse. Pam is an intuitive eating coach and we did an episode on diet culture and friendship and how can get kind of tiresome when you’re sitting around with a group of friends and all anyone wants to talk about is the keto diet they’re on now or whatever. Intermittent fasting or whatever like new thing everyone’s doing.

Nina: 10:58

So I said to Pam Pam, I’m coming to Boulder with my college friends. I would love to stay a little longer or come a little earlier and hang with you. What works? And she looked at the dates and she made it work for a couple of days after and we spent a lot of time together. We did tons of things. We did paddle boarding for a couple of hours.

Nina: 11:18

I am not really a water person. I really don’t do much on the water, even though I live in the land of 10,000 lakes. I don’t know if I’m not a good swimmer, I’m not comfortable on boats, but I loved the paddle boarding, which I’ve only done a couple of times in my life. We were out there for a couple of hours with mountains as the view. It was incredible, so different than the Midwest. I mean, that was the first thing we did. She picked me up at the hotel, we were in our swimsuits and we drove 30 minutes to this place. It did take us I think Pam would agree it took us like a good 10 minutes to get used to being physically in the same space and we were in a car, so like we were close, but she was driving, so it’s like she couldn’t really look at me, look at me, our voices or, of course, something we’re very used to, not just from talking on the phone but from each other’s podcasts. I mean we are very used to each other’s voices, but to actually see each other in person really was different. We kind of kept giggling. I imagine it’s like what online dating must be like. But 10 years later, that’s a long time. We had so much fun. I mean, we had a great time.

Nina: 12:17

I was going to stay at Pam’s house and then I realized about a week before it is so rare for me to be able to stay in a hotel by myself. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve done that in my adult life. I’ve been married since I was 23. So that’s part of it. And then when I take trips with friends which really isn’t that often, but if I do, I tend to be sharing a room with a friend. So this was kind of a rare opportunity where I already had a hotel room. Brian was leaving. I’m like you know, I’m just going to keep that hotel room. So we were together pretty much every moment other than sleeping, and it’s just a testament to Pam that she was super sweet about me changing the plan a week before and that she was ready to host me in the first place. She’s just a good person. There were lots of meals together. We got together with another writing friend, julie Vic. Hi Julie, who lives in Boulder, who I’ve been in touch with like for lots of years on social media on different kinds of like parenting writing topics, and Julie’s a humor writer. She’s so, so funny and I’m going to put her book and the show notes too. It’s a book all about parenting as an introvert and it’s humor.

Nina: 13:21

So this is my long roundabout way of saying that it really is a good thing to go out there and meet some of these online friends that you’ve been developing over the years in person. You could start with doing that in town. There are probably people in your hometown that you have well, I should probably shouldn’t say everybody. I know a lot of my non-writer friends. Non-podcasting friends don’t necessarily have friends like this. Actually, my college friends were like wait, what are you doing? You’re staying here and doing what With who? They don’t have friends like this that they’ve never met. So maybe it’s not so common, but if you are someone who has out of town friends or even in town friends who you’ve never met in person, do it. I think it’s a great thing to do, and if it doesn’t work out, that’s okay too. You go back to being online friends, or I guess doesn’t always work out that you can go back. I just had an episode a couple of weeks ago with Jill Smokler where we did talk about how sometimes you can’t go back. That was episode 64. Jill Smokler was scary mommy Also went to college with me and Rebecca and Julie.

Nina: 14:26

Okay, I’m going to force myself to wrap it up. I’d love to hear from listeners if you have trips that you’re thinking of taking with out of town friends, if this encourages you to reach out and say, hey, let’s do this already, let’s make these plans, because I do think it did take some pushing to say let’s do this. I’m not saying I don’t even know if I started it. I think I did. Rebecca and Julie may disagree. If somebody has to say this is happening, just get the ball rolling. Someone just has to take that organizing role and you just don’t have to stay as the organizer. You can switch off, but someone has to start and I encourage you to do it.

Nina: 15:03

Thank you for being here. I will be back next week with a regular episode with a guest. I’m doing so many fun recordings this summer, things planned already coming up in the fall and, like I said, if you have ideas or you want to be on the show, you know someone who should be on the show. I don’t always have a lot of openings and it actually depends how much I can schedule, but you can always try me. Google Dear Nina pitching guidelines.

Nina: 15:29

I do want to thank you for being here because I like to say thank you. You don’t have to be here. There’s a lot of podcasts you can be listening to. I don’t take it for granted that you are listening to this one. It means you probably care about the topic of friendship and are interested in it, and I’m so glad to hear that, because it’s the topic I’m most passionate about and I’m thrilled that there are people here along for the ride. If you’d like to talk about it more, I do have a Facebook group. Everyone’s welcome to join it, called Dear Nina the group. When you go search in the search part of Facebook, just type in Dear Nina the group and that will bring you to the group. I’m on TikTok now. God help me. Dear Nina podcast on TikTok and on the old Instagram at dearinab. All right, see you next week. Don’t forget when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around. Bye.