Monday, April 18, 2011

Airport Literature

Arielle was set to fly into Denver this morning from Boston. Unfortunately, due to a variety of events that cumulatively conspired against her, she missed that flight by 8 minutes. She is now wandering about an airport, amusing herself without the aid of her laptop (the battery to which was, unfortunately, left behind, dutifully plugged into the wall). She called to let me know that I'd be picking her up at 10:22 p.m. instead of 10:02 a.m. She also told me that she has decided to go ahead and start writing her book, since that's all she can do for the next 12 hours. Pen and paper, old school style.

We had a good long conversation about writing, and blogs, and social networking, and whether or not Twitter is something that I need to do (she says yes, I say eh). When I got off the phone, I started thinking about how Arielle is finally starting to write her book thanks to being forced into a situation where she has no other distractions. All it took was forgetting a charger, and missing a flight- two seemingly unrelated (and on the surface, negative) events.

This leads me to wonder- what am I letting distract me? What are you letting distract you? It might be something that isn't even readily apparent as a distraction. Which makes it all the more difficult, I suppose. I have to put a critical eye to almost everything in that case. That's pretty daunting. Even so, I'm glad I have plucky, roll with the punches kind of friends to make me think about things like this.

Here's to Arielle's book. And your book, and my book, whatever that might be for each of us.

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