Hey there Gold Star Revolution Squad! It's #goldstarfriday, which means that it is time to announce our Star of the Week!
Future Stars of the Week will be chosen from reader nominations! But since we are at the beginning of this project, I will be the one nominating our Friday Star of the Week until the time when nominations from readers start to roll in. Please send me your nominations, and please see the end of this post for more details on how to do that!
This week, I am nominating someone that I have never met in person. She lives way over on the other side of the country from me. In fact, I've never even heard her voice. But she is one of the most important people in my life. This week's Star of the Week is my dear friend Amy.
Amy and I "met" back in 2013 when we were matched up as email gratitude buddies by the amazing Andrea Scher. In fact, I know the exact date we met because I saved the email from Andrea that paired us up – January 7, 2013.
I signed up for a gratitude buddy mainly because I wanted an accountability partner. I felt like I was not practicing gratitude consistently in my life, and I wanted to change that.
After you were assigned a gratitude buddy by Andrea, you were then supposed to send an email to your buddy each night listing three things you were grateful over the course of the day.
It didn't have to be complicated with explanations or anything like that. It could just be a simple and straightforward numbered list, like -- today I am grateful for: 1. my cat; 2. the roof over my head; 3. chocolate chip cookies. You get the picture!
A couple other people I know also signed up for gratitude buddies around the same time, but their relationships with those buddies fizzled out quickly, if not immediately.
That was certainly not the case with Amy and me! We hit it off immediately. Over time, our daily emails became longer and more detailed. We started including information about ourselves that was not directly related to our gratitude lists, and we learned more and more about each other's lives as the years passed.
We are still sending daily gratitude lists to each other more than seven years later, which is pretty darn amazing in my not-so-humble opinion!
What I appreciate the most about Amy is the absolute and total consistency of our relationship. I am not in regular contact with very many people at all. I live with my husband, of course, but other than that, I am honestly not in touch with anyone else on a daily basis other than Amy.
This regular contact is SO incredibly important to me. It's like an anchor that holds me down when I feel like I could start floating away on a sea of loneliness. There have been many times in recent years when I wished that I had more/closer friends. But at those times, I am always comforted by the fact that I know I will be receiving an email from Amy in the near future.
We now know that social connections can improve health and increase longevity, and Amy helps to fill that role for me. Our gratitude practice always gives me something to look forward to, and I will be forever grateful for that!
One funny anecdote about Amy: Whenever my husband and I talk about Amy, we always refer to her as "GB," which stands for Gratitude Buddy. Tom and I know several people named Amy, and so we decided to come up with nicknames to differentiate between them. I have told Amy about this nickname that we have given her, and she doesn't seem to mind! 😂
Amy is an aspiring author, and I have been lucky enough to read a fairly polished draft of her first book. I cannot overstate how much I admire her tenacity and her persistence in following through on her dream!
Amy loves NASCAR and Tony Stewart (although he is retired now). I am not a fan of racing, but I absolutely appreciate how passionate she is about it! She even blogs about racing over on Bad Groove.
She is also a lover of dogs, and she dotes on her two beagles, Gracie and Abbie. I enjoy hearing about what they are up to on a regular basis!
I don't know if she sees herself this way, but I think that Amy is also quite a talented photographer. I always look forward to seeing her pictures on social media, especially the close ups that she often takes of flowers.
Amy is an extremely thoughtful friend. She sends me surprise snail mail every now and then (I love snail mail!!!), and she always gives me awesome gifts for Christmas and my birthday.
Although I don't think we've ever discussed it (how can that be, I'm now wondering???), I hope to actually meet Amy one day when we get the Coronavirus under control and when I feel comfortable enough to travel. I'm confident that it will happen!
And with that, I am delighted to present this week's Star of the Week award to Amy! Congratulations my friend!
Time for our Star of the Week photo! I don't have a picture of Amy and me together since we have never met in person, so we will have to settle for this cute one of Amy on her own. I have also included a bonus photo of Gracie and Abbie because they are just TOO cute!
Please join me in congratulating Amy as our Star of the Week!
Is there someone who makes a huge impact on your life on a consistent basis like Amy does on mine? Let us know in the comments! And why not nominate that person to be our next Star of the Week? To read the rules about the nomination process and get more information about the free gift that U.S. winners will receive, please click here. Then submit the Nomination Form!
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