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I finally joined Facebook. It's fun.

I had some sort of 24 hour bug. I realized something was amiss when I found myself standing in the middle of a Farmer's Market on a beautiful, warm sunny Saturday wearing a winter coat and still shivering violently... a few people saw me and steered clear, so I left promptly. Waited for my BF in the parking lot while he finished shopping. He brought back flowers for me from one of the vendors, and then took me back to his place and waited on me hand and foot. He didn't give me a little bell, though, so I just whipped out my cell phone and called him whenever I needed anything... Could you fluff my pillows? j/k. I tried not to be too demanding, and I slept for most of the time, but I did get a massage or two ; )

Anyway, feeling all better now.

I read an article this morning in the NY Times that will change my life, as it has changed my whole philosophy and perspective on friendship. Before today, my goal has been to limit my number of friends. I thought it was healthier to have a small group of friends that I spent all my time with and energy on, but now I'm going to aspire to have as many friends as possible. You might say, "Duh, everyone knows you can never have too many friends." But knowing and having experienced all the flakiness that comes with having superficial friendships, I disagreed with that theory and fought against it. But today I've turned over a new leaf. While I plan to maintain my core of tried-and-true close-knit friends for life, I'll no longer veer from superficial friendships, as long as they bring something to the table. And most everyone has something to offer.

Anyway, here's an excerpt of the article:

"The subconscious nature of emotional mirroring might explain one of the more curious findings in their research: If you want to be happy, what’s most important is to have lots of friends. Historically, we have often thought that having a small cluster of tight, long-term friends is crucial to being happy. But Christakis and Fowler found that the happiest people in Framingham were those who had the most connections, even if the relationships weren’t necessarily deep ones.

The reason these people were the happiest, the duo theorize, is that happiness doesn’t come only from having deep, heart-to-heart talks. It also comes from having daily exposure to many small moments of contagious happiness. When you frequently see other people smile — at home, in the street, at your local bar — your spirits are repeatedly affected by your mirroring of their emotional state. Of course, the danger of being highly connected to lots of people is that you’re at risk of encountering many people when they are in bad moods. But Christakis and Fowler say their findings show that the gamble of increased sociability pays off, for a surprising reason: Happiness is more contagious than unhappiness. According to their statistical analysis, each additional happy friend boosts your good cheer by 9 percent, while each additional unhappy friend drags you down by only 7 percent. So by this logic, adding more links to your network should — mathematically — add to your store of happiness. “If you’re at the center of a network, you are going to be more susceptible to anything that spreads through it,” Fowler said. “And if happiness is spreading more reliably, then on average you’re going to be catching happy waves more often than you catch sad waves.”

The whole article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13contagion-t.html?pagewanted=1