Very nice food for thoughts, I think!
As a said several times, the thing I like the most of this site is the people, which I also think it is the most important. In the end, if you don't want any interaction, you may just play with the computer and that's it. What makes this site great is the sense of belonging to a community.
thanks for sharing!
All the best,
Andrea
It's amazing the people I meet. I ran into a music promoter at the same show who, after talking for a few minutes, turns out to be a chess player. Hiw father was also a serious Master as well with lots of published articles.
I made a friend here on chess.com, we played 8 or 9 games and chatted quite a bit. It turns out we don't live very far apart. We got together one Friday night for beer and chess and I imagine we'll do it again.
I had a thought about 5:00 am on a Saturday morning I had to post. I played a show Friday night and normally you get people coming up to say they like your music, etc. I encourage people who are riends with the band to come up and say hello (which most do). However, I had a first on Friday. About ten minutes before we're about to on a guy comes to the dressing room door and knocks. I tell him to come in. He is just standing there looking at me so I introduce myself. He then starts talking. It turns out he read one of my blogs here on chess.com and decided to come down to show based on that. It was great, he was there because of written words on a website site. We talked for a few minutes and continued the conversation after the show. After an exchange of email addresses we parted ways.
This got me thinking that I have met, online at chess.com, some wonderful and interesting people I wouldn't get to meet otherwise. By this, I mean that our paths wouldn't cross in everyday life. Chess.com has extended outside my internet existance. I'll be talking to someone in a bookstore and chess.com will come up. They'll say "I have a friend who is into that site." The people I've met here have many interests and passions. I encourage you to find out what your friends do outside of chess. You might be surprised by their answers. This is also a good opportunity to make friends with people from other cultures and countries. I travel a lot and am going on tour to Europe next year. I will get a chance to meet some of the people I know from here, face to face (and hopefully play a lot of chess with them). I would say it's good thing to make friends here since you never know what interesting things you'll find out about them.