Dear Sanna,

I told you I would send you an email, but clearly I haven't done that yet.  Instead, I am going to use this moment to write you a letter publicly, since I apparently carry you around in my pocket anyhow.

Part of the reason I haven't written you yet is due to the fact that since I spoke to you (On Skype!  It was Awesome!), I have done these things:
1) Driven back to my parents' house
2) Eaten chili
3) Pulled dresses out of my closet for a schmancy dinner tomorrow
4) Fallen asleep with a cat on my chest
5) Awoken at the ungracious hour of 5AM
6) Blearily eaten food, gathered coffee, hopped in the car
7) Drove three and half hours to work
8) Worked
8.5) Dropped off dress at cleaners
9) Took the cheese my mama gave me back to my house (forgetting to put it in the fridge) and departed for soup at Teresa's apartment
10) Went to the library to volunteer
11) Stopped back at Teresa's to collect my laptop
12) Drove home; fell asleep
13) Woke up at the unkind hour of 7 AM
14) Blearily eaten food, wished for coffee, hopped in the car
15) Worked
16) Discovered the dress I had taken to the cleaners is being held hostage!  (Will I have to go naked!?)
17) Ate noodles, made muff-cakes, tried to work on grad school apps
18) Began this entry

As you can see, it has been a touch busy.  And all I can think about is not how exciting it was to meet John Green, or even many of the specifics of that experience, but instead the oddity of the whole situation of celebrity.  I mentioned some of this to you yesterday over the wonky internet connection, and slightly to my mother before I went downtown, but events like this are very odd.  For the most part, the people who plan events count on the popularity of one or more of the speakers to draw a sufficient crowd.  Or the enthusiasm of the target audience.  In this case, we will assume that the majority of the people present had been drawn by the name JOHN GREEN not the quality writing of SAUL BELLOW.
That being said, the audience comes already knowing quite a bit about the speaker.  John makes himself fairly present on the internet.  There is plenty he doesn't share about his life (naturally, it's his.), but also quite a lot that he does share.  Fans of his videos and books take in all this content and learn more about him while he resides on the other side of the computer screen appreciating the growth in viewership/readership, only able to take in so much of the returning information.  This results in a decidedly uneven situation.  Those people who go to events such as the One Book, One Chicago event on Monday come with the sense that they know this person who is now signing their book.  They know this remarkable person who has the influence to inspire people to drive three hours across three states (which as it turns out, he also did that afternoon.  He was in Grand Haven!) but that remarkable person in all likelihood has no idea who they are.
Now, I don't want to blow this out of proportion.  John Green is very popular, but not so much that his name is universally known.  Very few people have that scope of influence.  But he is still popular enough to be unable to personally respond to all the entreaties for recognition he gets from those who appreciate his work.  Compared to Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, Hitler, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Llama, or other well known figures, John Green is unremarkable.  But compared with me?  Many of the other people there?  We become the unremarkable ones.  And that is humbling.  I could not predict what impact I will have on the world, or individual people of the world, by the time I am thirty-something, but I do know that I likely won't fully grasp the extent to which I have effected people's lives because it is very difficult to have completely equal footing with the people in our lives.
No matter how much we tell our friends we love them, it is hard to express the actual extent to which they have touched our lives.  If it is difficult to do this with the people we love, how much harder must it be to tell someone to whom we are a stranger how they have impacted our choices in life?

I didn't know this was the direction I was going when I started this post, but I want to take this opportunity to tell you in this (not very) public forum that I honestly do not know where I would be if I didn't have you as a friend.  I greatly miss living with you (I feel very guilty about watching Burn Notice while eating ice cream now... no one to join me!).  I love you, my dear friend, and as much as I am not very good at being a public person, I am glad to have you in my life more than it makes me nervous to share that online.

I will write you a proper letter again soon, hopefully.  Until then, I will entertain myself by looking at ticket prices to Sweden.  Also, this seal will just have to suffice.

Love love,
Melissa