This year at SXSW, I met/ran into Ariel Meadow Stallings a fellow writer whose work I came to (and continue to) admire from the pre-bronze reaches of Web 1.0. Neither of us could remember if we had actually met in person before but since we had about 8500 friends in common and it was Fray Cafe, where we had both just told stories, it didn't really matter.

Ariel is one of those people you simply want to check in with every so often because she's always doing something cool. She blogs (for fun and professionally), has written a book, runs events and, in few uncertain terms, has an existence light years more narratively sexy than mine. I'd be jealous as heck if she wasn't so nice about it.

Since I've been going to SXSW for 9 years now, I don't meet as many new people as I used to. Making new friends has become a nice, if rare, surprise, like finding ice cream in the back of the freezer. And when they have a work/life balance going on that I admire, that's like finding two pints. And neither is vanilla.

I'm in the midst of some heavy professional reevaluation now so in addition to bookmarking Electrolicious, I'm keeping an eye on Ariel's projects and the way she makes them happen. She's someone doing it how I wanna be.

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[Mace]

What a funny coincidence. Through a series of links, I ended up reading the Offbeat Bride blog for a couple of hours of downtime at work. That was just last Friday!