The Gavin Show

I met Matt Kraft (known in some circles as Krafty, K-Box, K-Rock, Kraft-o-mattic, Kraftmattic, and sometimes Matt) at Salisbury University’s variety show in the fall of 1998. He, along with our good buddy Josh, played in a band called Release, and I had somehow been convinced to act as one of the shows emcees.

A couple weeks later I replaced the guitar player in Release. By the spring, Krafty, Josh and I had re-formed as local legends of late-nineties rock, Three Track Mind. We released one full-length album called Throws Like a Girl (which you can still find on iTunes).

I’ve known this guy for just a shade over a decade. We’ve been through a lot, and he’s one of my best friends. So I was thrilled that he recently started a photo blog called, fittingly, Kraftmattic.

His daily photos are really fun, and his accompanying posts just crack me right the hell up. Recently, he had a photo of portable toilets dangling above a construction site, and in another entry he turned a well-known piece of art into a Kids in the Hall reference. I love him, so go subscribe to his feed!

This is the first of a weekly series. Each Friday, I’ll write about one of my friends’ blogs and tell you why you should be reading it, too. To kick things off, I’ll start with one of the blogs I’ve been reading the longest.

My friend Rachel, whom I’ve known since high school, has an amazing way with words over on her blog, Diary of Why. Just back from a seven-day trip to Spain, she’s returned to Paris with some photos and stories that are not to be missed.

Each entry starts with “Why”, and her blog’s tagline is “Questions without answers, and answers to questions that nobody asked.” It’s a great format, one I think I subconsciously stole from her a couple times.

Her stories are at once hilarious, heartbreaking, insightful, and always interesting. She’s one of the few people I know who keeps up with her blog in an intelligent, engrossing way that inspires me to step up my own writing.

Earlier this month, she wrote a jaw-dropping story called “Why I’ve gone from Mary Poppins to Cinderella” about baby-sitting for a rather tightly-wound Parisian woman with an expensive apartment and fancy floors. She takes the reader by the hand and walks through the entire ordeal in a manner that has you dying to find out what happens next. This is the sort of blog that should be compiled into a bestselling book and then optioned for a blockbuster movie.

So click on over to Diary of Why for some reading on your Friday afternoon!

Being unemployed is weird and tough. It’s like a surprise unpaid vacation (but you don’t go anywhere) and also your health insurance runs out. It’s stressful, especially when I’m not sure what I want to do next.

But with all this free time on my hands, I’ve been able to catch up on my friends’ blogs, podcasts, and other creative endeavors. I can take the time to absorb the things my friends are saying and doing, instead of just skimming over posts like I did when I worked full-time.

As it turns out, I have really creative, smart, funny, perceptive friends. Many of them are much better writers than me. Most are better podcasters and they’re all infinitely more interesting. Also, I’ve discovered that I start my day with the “Friends” folder I’ve created in Google Reader before I hit any news site to catch up on headlines from overnight.

So, in the spirit of the #followfriday meme on Twitter, I’m going to spotlight one of my friends’ sites each Friday. I visit dozens of friends’ sites, so that’s easy material right there! Also, I’ll be able to single-handedly take credit for driving traffic to their sites. Up to–and in some cases including–ten extra visits!

I’ll put up my first post about a smart and cool friend later today.