It’s been a little over a month ago since I committed to reconnecting with each of my contacts. You can read the post where I laid out the parameters of the project here.
The progress has been relatively slow, however even still, the response has been rather fortuitous .
I was able to make it through the A’s in my cell phone as it seemed easiest, given I was traveling when I started the project and because I found myself a rider instead of a driver on most occasions while on vacation. This lead to my ability to text and email with greater focus than what I might normally be presented with. I was able to knock out 5-10 connections while waiting for a friend or riding to see another.
The contact is brief, as I meld noting a unique personal life intersection, that the recipient and I share.
In total, I reached out to 89 people and I am proud to have entered they’re lives. The responses to my connections have been received with gratitude, excitement, anger, humility, a wall up, industry, and more..
Highlights include:
– An opportunity to consult with a very respectable firm, which may prove to be quite lucrative.
– A blind date that yielded great conversation and a most delicious beer.
– An incredibly easy conversation with a friend I’d not seen in 3 years or so, whom I randomly saw again in the grocery store only a few days later.
– An awareness of what a friend had experienced when we took a spiritual retreat nearly 4 years prior, of which I was completely unaware. His insight was profound and stayed with me many more days following our brief exchange via email.
– A belly hurt inducing laugh with 2 old rugby buddies (one if LA and one in NY) about the shenanigans be embarked upon with feverish ferocity back in the day.
– Shorts notes from some of my broker colleagues giving me their point of view on the pulse of the emerging real estate market.
– A smiling conversation with an old lover that now lives in Russia, whom at the time I wrote was attending the wedding of a mutual friend..one of which I would have probably never know about.
– Sound advice from an older gentleman whose presence and tutelage more resembles that of a wise sage than that of that just an ordinary human man.
– A humbling new awareness that the last time I spoke with a particular person, that I had really hurt her feelings.
– A sales pitch.
– Humbly making a call to say that I was sorry for a past misunderstanding, of which has yet to be returned.
– A general sense of catching up with life with around 10-15 more
– Several contacts had contact info that was incorrect, thus got purged from the archives
– A handful of folks who had no clue who I was. 1 of them proclaimed “Stranger danger’ and asked not to be contacted again…I wish she could have heard my distracting laughter after having read that and “Take care”
So, its been a success so far…and I’m just getting started. At the rate I’m going right now, having contacted nearly 100 people in a month, I can logistically anticipate making it through my phone in approximately the next 12-15 months. It was actually sort of fun to write someone that I had perhaps met only once 5 years prior, and try to guess the response. I was wrong, regarding what I thought they might say in return, about 50% of time, which did not surprise me.
I’m going to stick with it. I found new growth, humility, laughter, serendipity, resurfaced memories (good and bad), and so much more. It makes me feel connected, thus part of, a people that are moving through their lives. They to are learning and growing and wishing and dreaming and working through the doldrums and collectively working toward making life grand. Inasmuch, given my daily aspiration to achieve the a fore mentioned progress, helps to make my life more grand.
To those whose lives I touch and vice versa, I humbly say “Thank you!”
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