I’m writing this from row 23, seat D, on Delta flight 1261 from Boston to Salt Lake City. The flight so far has been tame, which I thank the pilot and the clear weather for. There’s an infant two rows behind me that has expressed his displeasure over the cramped quarters, but overall has been a good sport. We’ve been flying for about 4 hours now, which means we’re somewhere over the Midwest.
I’m in a window seat and can’t help but stick my face up against the window every 20 minutes or so. The guy in the aisle seat probably thinks I’m crazy, taking photos out the window.
For the last few hours, very flat, snow-covered land with a kind of large grid of roads. Farms, small towns. For someone from Boston – where even the busiest streets downtown are paved cattle trails – and who is into clean lines and a bit of minimalism, this is strangely beautiful.
I’m just starting to see, not exactly mountains, but hills. Pine trees darken the land as it comes up towards us.
This one flight is showing me just how varied and beautiful this nation is.
Of course, by now maybe you can guess what my big confession is.
I don’t travel often.
I haven’t been on a plane in two years. Every conference I’ve been to for work has been on the Eastern Seaboard. Atlanta. Philadelphia. I’ve never been further south than Florida, and never further west than Johnson City, TN (actually, I had a layover in Columbus, OH, but I was in the airport for all of an hour, so I don’t count it).
This is different than how I’d always thought I’d be. Growing up, I’d always figured travel – for work and for pleasure – would be a fairly regular thing for me. But it just hasn’t panned out that way.
Here’s yet another way social media is changing my life. First, and most obvious, is that social media has given me the means to meet Meg, the reason I’m on this plane right now. She flew from Vancouver to Boston last October (her longest trip ever), and I’m heading to her fair city today. This back and forth will keep up for the next several months, until Meg is able to make the leap to Boston full time.
But there’s another way social media’s going to get me on a plane, and that’s Social Media for Social Change. We’re organizing our second event for New York in April. Now, I’ve been to New York over a dozen times, but the chance to go there and do something, give something to the city, is exciting.
There’s talk, after New York, of doing SM4SC events in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Portland, OR, and even London. I’m sure we’ll be visiting more and more cities as SM4SC grows.
Beyond that, there are of course the conferences that I’ll go to for SM4SC, both social media ones and nonprofit ones. I won’t be able to make SXSW this spring, but I’ll certainly be there in 2010.
What about you? Would you like to confess some way that social media has changed your life? Leave a comment below, or maybe write about it on your blog.
