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Star of the Week: Matt!

Hello Gold Star Revolution Squad and welcome to Gold Star Friday! It's time to announce our Star of the Week!

My very strong preference is to choose our Star of the Week from reader nominations! However, I will nominate the Star of the Week when there are no reader nominations to pick from, which is the case this week.

I would really love to hear about the fabulous people in your life, so please send me your nominations, and please see the end of this post for more details on how to do that!

All recipients of the Star of the Week award who live in the US can choose to receive a free gift from my Gold Star Award Winner collection** on Zazzle!


This week, I am proud to present the Gold Star of the Week award to my dear friend Matt!


As was the case with my sister-in-law Karin last week, I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to name Matt as the Star of the Week. The delay is absolutely not a reflection of his place in my life!


Matt is literally the oldest friend that I have. Not in terms of age, but in terms of the length of time that we have known each other. I don't remember a time in my life when I did not know Matt. We essentially grew up across the street from each other in an incredibly tiny town in Pennsylvania.


There are so many things that I appreciate about Matt! I feel so blessed and honored to have a friend who knows so much about my life. He knows or knew every member of my immediate family and also almost all of the members of my extended family. We have an ease of deep communication that I experience with very few people in my life. Having a friend who understands your past and where you came from is priceless!


Since Matt has known me for just about all of my life, he also understands me better than most people do. We share a dark and sometimes sarcastic sense of humor, and we laugh a lot when we are together! He knows all of my personality quirks and tendencies, and he has witnessed me going through every single phase of my life. I am grateful that he has remained my friend throughout all of it.


Matt and I have created a ton of fabulous memories over the years! It is always super fun to hang out with him!! Matt was with me the first time I ate Indian food. We attended quite a few Lollapaloozas and a bunch of other concerts together. We even went on a cross-country driving trip in our mid-20s that gave me my first and only experiences in certain parts of the country.


Physical distance did eventually separate us. I moved to North Carolina and Matt was living in Massachusetts. But for a while he had a job that required him to come to NC periodically, and I tried to get to the Boston area as often as I could. So we still managed to see each other with some regularity.


Several years ago, Matt picked up and moved to Europe. He lived in Bern, Switzerland for most of that time, but he recently moved to Denmark.


Matt was able to get a job overseas because he is an incredibly smart and talented person. He works as a chemical engineer and has managed a variety of large projects over the years. If Matt interviews for a job, he will receive a job offer from that company, that's just how impressive he is!


Tom and I were lucky enough to be able to visit Matt and his wife Mara in Switzerland two years in a row back in 2016 and 2017. It was absolutely wonderful to experience Bern through Matt's eyes!


Here are a few photos of us and our spouses from those trips to Bern, one of the four of us taken many years ago in Salem, Massachusetts, and a couple of Matt and me from a super long time ago:


I'm not sure when I will see Matt in person again since Tom and I aren't planning on traveling overseas any time soon. But lately Matt and I have gotten to see each other on Zoom calls, which is something we were not doing prior to the start of the pandemic. So that's one small upside of the pandemic as far as I am concerned!


It isn't the easiest thing in the world to maintain a friendship with someone for close to 50 years, especially when you haven't lived in the same place for the past two decades. And yet, here we are, still friends after all this time. In fact, I consider Matt to be not just my friend but my family. I am proud of us, and I know that I will continue to appreciate Matt and his friendship far into the future! I love you my friend!!


I am thrilled to present Matt with this week's award! Please join me in congratulating him as our Star of the Week! ⭐


Would you like to nominate yourself or someone you care about 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!


**If you click through any of the links on this page and make a purchase from Zazzle, I will receive two separate commissions: one for being the designer of the product and another for referring the sale to Zazzle.

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