Thoughts From The Air

It’s been so long since I’ve done this. At least it feels that way. I’m at about 38,000 feet, on a Southwest flight heading from Florida to Phoenix, AZ, and I have my laptop propped open and in my laptop. This used to be such a regular occurrence for me, going back to my days working for a software company. I’d fly all over the place, almost weekly, and rarely go a flight without propping open my Dell and doing an hour or two of work on my laptop. Of course, I’m not working right now, I’m writing, which is something I’ve never considered work, even when I was a kid in school.

Today, I have an HP, my own HP, not company-owned, and I’m writing and thinking about me, about New Orleans, and about SBRC, not about my boss or a client. And I’m certainly not thinking about how many hours my team might be over budget on our latest project. Today, all days as of late, I’m thinking about my next steps, the future of SBRC, and I couldn’t be more excited. I have my anxiety points – money being one. But believe me, after a year now of not drawing a paycheck, I’m almost numb to it. At this point, what are a few more withdrawals from the savings account? I’m way beyond the point of letting things like that worry me or dictate what I do. These days, I’m following my gut, and my heart.

I left New Orleans a couple of weeks ago. Not for good. I’ll be back there in February. I carved out time to pro-actively get out and work on and plan the next steps for my program of helping families in need get furniture and household goods as they moved back into homes more than two years after Hurricane Katrina became famous. I’ve already been to Florida, Boston, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and back to Florida. Along the way, I made a number of new contacts and met a handful of very gracious and generous and encouraging people -- Katrina Shaw in Boston, Ira Smith and Mark Sigman in Acton, Mass., Anne Leyh and Tony Pitale and their wonderful family in New Jersey, Scott Walchak in Maryland and several others. My brother Chris and his wife Kristan were a huge help in Maryland in helping me gather a load of donated furniture that we’ll be getting down to New Orleans soon, as well as to meet some very talented and gracious people.

It’s amazing, too, because when I left New Orleans to take these four weeks or so to garner more support and raise more awareness and clear my head a bit, I knew I had to take some sort of action, and go out and find help, find contributions (of all sorts). And already, just a couple of weeks in, my plans have crystallized. Not materialized, that will come as I execute and act on it. But I feel like I have the plan now, and I have all those people mentioned above to thank for helping me to get to this point.

Now I’m in mid-flight to Arizona, where I’ll spend the next 9 or 10 days taking another big step in my life. I remember in the spring of 2004, when I took my parents to dinner in Jacksonville, FL, and told them I was going to move from Boston to Scottsdale, AZ. They just gave me this look, asked me if I was sure and if that was what I wanted. At the time, I sure was, and it turned out to be the right move, for several reasons. I had a great few years there, made some great friends, and will always go back to vacation and visit. But it’s definitely time for me to pack up that apartment I’ve been keeping, close things down there, and say goodbye to Arizona being the place I call home.

I don’t have many of the 5 and 10-year from now goals (I’m very much a day to day, week to week person), but one that I do have is that I want to own a condo one day in Scottsdale, so I can go visit a couple times a year. But that’s for my 40s. Today is for New Orleans, St. Bernard, re-building SBRC into an even better organization, and getting back into the working world, all at the same time.

For most of this flight, when I look out the window, I see nothing but cloud cover. I can’t see any of the landscape or ground, as if I can’t see where I’m going. Fortunately, that view is not a metaphor for my life, as on this day, I feel as if I know exactly where I’m going.

A few not-so-serious random thoughts….

Airports are great places to just watch people and observe so many interesting and unusual things. Sometimes it’s stuff I just don’t get. For instance, what possesses anyone, save an elderly or disabled person, to get on one of those moving walkways, and not keep walking? Are you that lazy that you’re content to coast along at 1.5 mph as people who are slumbering along on foot breeze by you? It blows my mind that people do that. Just walk, you’ll get there faster, and not look like such ___ . (you can fill in the blank).

Speaking of laziness, going back to Massachusetts brought back some memories. Nothing like seeing convenience stores with drive-thru Dunkin’ Donuts. My brother and I went into one of these stores to get some water and a snack, breezed in and out, yet there were 4, 5 and 6 cars sitting in line to get a Dunkin’ coffee, at about 1 p.m. no less. Some things in this country scare me.

Lastly, if you’re ever driving on Hwy 295 in the Baltimore area (it heads west out of BWI Airport), make sure you do NOT get off the exit marked, “NSA – Restricted Access Only”. Yours truly made that mistake as I was trying to turn around and go back the other way after missing my exit. Let’s just say that the 5 armed security personnel who immediately surrounded my car weren’t helped by the fact that I had an Arizona Driver’s License and was driving a rental car. Trust me, steer clear of that place, especially if you’re running late for a meeting.