I’m a massive advocate of shooting your shot. I’ve done it a million and one times and will do it a million and more. Obviously, since I’m married, my shots are limited to making new friends. (How many times can I get away with writing “shots” in this post?). Anyway these are 3 times I shot my shot my friendship shot online and it worked. I’ve picked three of my friends that I think would be cool with me sharing our stories (I’ll find out for sure after I publish and see if this is going to turn into a story of how posting online lost me friends)
The year was 2015. I had been following this really cool girl for a while! Eventually, I was like you know what? I want more than a twitter follow relationship so I sent her a DM. This DM breaks my rules for sending DMs – if you send me a DM saying just “hey”, chances are I won’t reply if I don’t know you, so please if you’re DMing me, send the full reason for the DM upfront! Anyway, probably because we have mutual friends and she’s a nicer person than me, she replied and now we are real friends still!
I guess 2015 was a very active year. It’s funny because I remember the story of me and Yvette differently in my head. I always thought I shot my shot, but it was kind of more mutual.. Studio of Mode used to have these movie screenings and I went to one of them by myself. Another friend was there but she was on a date so I was basically hanging alone and someone introduced me and Yvette (I think, can’t really remember). I listened in on a conversation where she talked about a newsletter she ran called “Sade’s list”. It was amazing and she shouldn’t have stopped but anyway. It led to me subscribing and then to her initial email.
She sent me a calendar invite and we met up for breakfast at 9am sharp (neither of us was late heart eyes) on that Saturday and then proceeded to spend the entire day together. Since then she has been such a permanent (and very well integrated) part of my life.
The year was 2018. I had been following Lolli since uni when she was a blogger. When she stopped blogging, I still followed her on Instagram and from 2017, we had a bit of Instagram back and forth, short conversations about stories she posted etc. She lived in London and one time when I was there, I decided “fuck it” and sent her a message. Looking back, my message was so very weird and random af, but hey it worked! We met up for brunch, then traipsed around London, met up with a friend of hers, bumped into a celebrity, took tons of photos of each other, stumbled on a carnival and went home. We met up again briefly that week and then she went on holiday and I left by the time she came back. Since then, I’ve seen her a couple of times when she’s been in Lagos. She moved as well, so we are much further apart but we talk pretty often and last year, we did vision boards together and she was with me till midnight when it was officially my birthday. It’s crazy that I followed this babe online for like 10 years and one message later, we are now friends!
Here are my tips for shooting your shot!
1. Try and establish some kind of relationship beforehand, interact with their content, etc, so they kind of know who you are before you just go straight to “lets be friends”
2. Keep your message short and go straight to the point
3. Don’t be like me and say “I’m safe” because that obviously means you’re a serial killer
Comment and tell me when you shot your shot!