While I've had a lot of amazing experiences since last December, and many people have said kind things about some of my posts and about my fanfiction, the "peak," really has to be actually getting together and meeting fellow Brokies, in New York in April and in Boston in September.
First of all, when it comes to travel--even just the short distance from Philadelphia to New York--I'm pretty conservative. Hey, travel is expensive, and I don't do it much, only one or two vacations a year. So, for me, it felt like a big deal, busting out of a rut, to make those trips.
More importantly, I'm essentially a very shy person. I don't do well in "party situations" with groups of strangers. I hate fishing for small talk and I'm lousy at it. But the thing is, amazingly, on both of these trips, I immediately felt comfortable with all these strangers. I'm sure in some cases it helped that we'd been communicating on line for months, but I think the main reason was, we all, already, had something in common to talk about. No fishing to discover a common interest in order to have something to say to each other.