Friends

You’re sick of hearing about BlogHer, aren’t you?  Well, it’s almost over.  Except.

I had a real epiphany this year, while on line at the hotel Starbucks, which is more expensive than any other Starbucks in NYC because they have a hotel surcharge.

Here is my epiphany.

I don’t go to BlogHer for the conference. Not for the panel, not even for the Keynote (did I mention that I was Voice of the Year).  Not for the parties, and not for the flutes of delicious champagne.

I go because my daily life is busy and I desperately miss friendship.  Of course, despite my personality, I have friends.  I have friends that I email and have lunch with and go out to dinner with, see movies together and celebrate with.  But I don’t have the daily permeation of friendship.  Mostly because I live in the real world and not in a sitcom.  I don’t just walk down the hall and see Lisa, or Ann or Maura and have a little chat that makes everything better even if we are talking about nothing.  Especially if we are talking about nothing.  And I certainly don’t have bedtime banter with Wendi in my everyday life, which is a real loss, because before Wendi fell asleep she told me, “it’s time for me to dream about Bieber now.  That he’s my son,” and that kept me up another twenty minutes thinking about how unfair it was that she got the last funny of the day in.

I am so lucky that I had this time with these lovely people.

But today I need to remind myself that friends need to show up not just to laugh, but to support each other in other ways, too.

Today I’m showing up for my friend Kevin.  I’m copying and pasting an email that he sent me (because plagiarism is just another word for friendship!)  I hope that you will read it and participate.   It takes like a minute.  Please do it.

I gave away 400 business cards about Cure JM trying to win a $250,000 Pepsi Refresh grant to people at BlogHer in NYC  this past weekend.

Our application has jumped No. 6 to No. 4 in the days since.

If you would indulge me a moment, I’d like to quote the theme song to Team America: World Police:

“Fuck, yeah!”

Now, more than ever, we need your votes, Tweets, Facebook messages, blog posts — whatever it takes to help get Cure JM to No. 2 by Sept. 1 and win that $250,000 grant for disease research.

In addition to just the money, our all-volunteer nonprofit would also receive from Pepsi a free year of consultation with a nonprofit specialist who will help us with future fundraising, grant writing and other projects to make Cure JM a more efficient and effective organization.

I’ve known two kids, one less than 2 years old, who have died from complications of juvenile myositis in the 8 years my daughter has been fighting this rare autoimmune disease that attacks the major muscles, joints and blood vessels. That’s not many, but it is enough.

As a disease that only 3 in a million kids a year are diagnosed with, we receive very little attention or money to research JM’s cause and cure. $250,000 would be half of the $500,000 we have raised in the past year all through volunteer fundraising, and all that money would go straight to research projects and the doctors who perform them.

If my words aren’t convincing enough, take a look at these videos (the first one I did, the second is by people who know what they are doing):

Cure JM Pepsi Refresh entry video (3 min): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHZHUGowx-E

Cure JM fundraising video (5 min): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovp4y3JHhb4

So, please — help.

VOTE:
Vote every day up to 3 TIMES (once per method) for Cure JM during the month of August!
(1) Send Text Vote to Pepsi (73774)  Type: 100850 to vote  *Standard text messaging rate apply.
(2) Use the Facebook app: http://bit.ly/CureJMonFB

(3) Vote directly from the Pepsi site at http://pep.si/bzLWyc.

SIGN UP FOR REMINDERS TO VOTE:

People can sign for daily e-mail reminders about voting at www.curejm.org. If we win the Pepsi Refresh grant, people who signed up for the reminder service will be in a drawing for an iPad, which one of our member has generously agreed to donate.

One year ago ...

• Awkward - 2013