Welcome to the Friendship Society.  When I was a young boy I had a prophetic dream.  My dream was short and simple, but the memory of this dream has remained with me for more than thirty years.  

I stood in an industrial area.  The lighting was dim and it was likely late in the day.  In front of me stood an old wooden fence.  Just in front of the fence was a dumpster.  I climbed on top of the dumpster lid, and jumped over the fence.  I walked around the corner of the fence and found a pile of old musty tarps.  On top of the tarps was a book.  The title of that book was "Friendship Society."  

I've thought about that dream numerous times over the years.  I felt in my heart that I am destined to do something with this title.  I'd love to tell you that I finally figured it out... but it's still a work in progress.

I've kept an eye on the domain names over the years, and about a year and a half ago friendshipsociety.net became available.  I snatched it up.

I've brainstormed about all the possibilities for the Friendship Society.  I've thought about creating a local club or group, I've thought about writing a book, I've thought about blogging or creating a forum.  

About six months ago I stumbled across Tynan and his new SETT blog platform.  This was something I had been looking for.  SETT is a blog where I can write, but it also includes a community section where anyone can contribute.  I thought this format would work great for discussing and creating friendships.  It allows for more community participation than the comments section of the typical blog.  The only problem was that SETT was still in development.  I waited patiently for SETT to go live so that I could launch my blog.  

Last Saturday I mysteriously woke up at 6am and was wide awake.  There was no chance of me getting back to sleep.  I quietly headed out to our living room and checked my email - SETT was live and open to the first fifty bloggers to sign up.  I've felt guided along this path to creating the Friendship Society, and this waking up early to find SETT live was just another step on this path.  

Now that I the I have the new blog up and running I have the challenge of trying to figure out what the heck I'm supposed to write about.  Obviously it will be about friendships, but there are really so many different directions I could take it.  My first blog was a personal development blog, and I really still like blogging about self improvement, so I plan to include a personal development flair to create and improve friendships.  (You can check out my earlier work at edenjournal.com.)

I'm planning to experiment with a few things to see what sticks.  To start with, this phrase has been stuck in my head for a long time - 

"You must be a good friend to have good friends."  

I'm going to leave it at that and let you think about that phrase.  Let me know what you think of it, and we'll discuss it more in my next post.