Impacts
Miss me?
Well, dammit, the feeling is mutual.
What can I say…it feels VERY strange to not be here writing every day.
Newsflash to myself:
Do something for a decade and there’s a big hole when it goes away.
I think these monthly posts will probably end up being whatever’s floating around my head at the time. Honestly, that could be anything. It’s a very strange head.
But, since I’m retired from this…I think I’ll just type whatever the hell I feel like.
(Actually, that’s really not so different)
Here’s my first post-retirement entry…
I was sitting in a waiting room recently. You know how that goes:
Stare at phone,
Flip through bad magazine,
Hopeful glance at receptionist to see if anything’s happening,
Nothing’s happening. Sigh.
Zone out and stare at wall for a while…
Definitely not the highlight of anyone’s day. It was just me and two ladies at the desk. At some point, one of us might have slipped into a coma. We were way closer to being asleep than awake. And then…
Suddenly, another patient walked through the door.
(I should say she FLEW through the door)
Immediately, the wall was no longer the star of that room…
Within 5 seconds, this lady had somehow gotten the stone-faced receptionists to smile. They actually looked somewhat alive. How was this happening? Was she some sort of magician?
Then she spotted a bowl of pears sitting on the front desk…
I hadn’t noticed them, but the lady was intrigued.
What kind of pears are they? Did someone grow them? Are they as delicious as they look??
She couldn’t stop talking about those things. At one point, she referred to the pears as “stunning” or “sexy” or some other adjective I’d never heard used to describe a piece of fruit.
Then she turned to me…
“Would you like to try one of these stunning pears?”
I was fully out of my boredom coma now. It was impossible not to smile. This force of nature sat down next to me and we ate our sexy pears while laughing the next few minutes away. Doctor’s office? We might as well have been at a picnic in the park. The lady entered a chamber of dullness and completely brightened the room. For those few moments, she changed all of the people in it. We started in one mood…interacted with her…and ended up somewhere better.
I finished my appointment and jumped into the car. Damn, those really were some stunning pears. Who knew?
I started laughing to myself thinking of weird fruit descriptions – a voluptuous mango, a stone cold fox of a kiwi, etc. Y’know, the kind of stuff that’s really only funny in our own heads. I drove away smiling from that waiting room interaction…
And then I got on the freeway.
Within minutes, an asshat in a Range Rover felt it was reasonable to send text messages at 70 miles per hour. I dodged his swerving death machine and quickly honked my horn – in case he cared about other people making it home alive.
(It wasn’t a big priority for him)
The guy was deeply offended that another person had the nerve to interrupt his text message conversation. It became…
A situation.
If you know how I’m wired at all, then you understand how I feel about douchebags. This guy was one of the greats. Long story short…I wasn’t thinking about sexy pears anymore. My day changed again. I was getting into it with a Range Rover asshat. First on the freeway. And then when he followed me to a gas station.
Yeah.
This is what’s on my mind at the moment…
It’s SO easy to forget how much of an impact we make on each other. Fruit lady and freeway maniac were extreme examples…but, man, you really have the power to change someone’s day. Want to see something cool? Try this…
Get a notebook and carry it around for the next week. All you need to do is one thing – write down every thought you have after interacting with people. That’s it. Like most of humanity, you probably see yourself as a logical, even-keeled person. But trust me on this…
Try the notebook thing.
You’ll see just how many ups and downs you go through based on the actions of others. Don’t fight it. Just track your thoughts after interacting with people. It’s an incredible exercise if you do it honestly.
Hopefully I’ve impacted your day a few times through the years. You’ve certainly done that for me. This is going to take some time to get used to, but…
Have a great month, nerds!
(Programming note: If you missed it, read the previous post to understand the once-a-month posts and Top 25 updates. And, if you’ve sent me an email about Nerdville, I finally responded this week. If you didn’t hear back, please make sure to check your spam folder. Finally, if you haven’t reached out yet, it’s not too late)
