No More Box

Recently, when I was in LA, I committed to trying to actually use twitter for a few days. I have been trying the service for a while and even made the huge mistake of trying to integrate it directly into my blog. I knew I wouldn’t be able to post as much as I would like, so with twitter, I could at least update people to what was going on.

Now that I am back to my "real life", I am still uncertain as to how useful twitter really is. It is certainly distracting. And if you notice the length of most of my posts, you might understand my frustrations with the 160 character limitation of twits.

But I have to tell a story of the usefulness of twitter.

While I was in LA, I twittered a bit about where I was at and what I was up to. Up until that point, I hadn’t really used the notification to txt feature, so while I had been "following" several people for a while, I wasn’t actually following hardly anyone except when I happened to be logged in to IM.

Well anyways… This guy Bryan who I had been following since I first got into twitter sends me a reply suggesting we get together because he too was in LA.

Now I am not overly familiar with the general geography of LA, but I knew it was huge. Knowing that, the last thing I wanted to do was drive all over LA and try and hook up with some guy just because I happen to be subscribing to his twitter feed.

So I got online, checked out Bryan’s profile, looked at his blog, and realized that I used to read his blog ALL the time. I don’t know, exactly, when or why I quit reading his blog. I switched feed readers recently and did a little house keeping. He blogs about a lot of GTD stuff and I have thoroughly fallen off that wagon recently. But he was someone who I knew read my stuff and I somewhat regularly read his stuff. To top it off, he didn’t just live in LA, he lived 4 miles east of Pasadena where I was staying.

So we got together for Sushi.

In my "past life" "coincidences" like this simply didn’t happen. But lately, it is almost starting to feel normal. Meeting Mark, Tony, Cal, my connection with House Blend Cafe… It just doesn’t feel so weird anymore.

Let me tell you. Sushi in LA is so much better than anything I have ever had in Florida. Maybe I am just eating at the wrong places, but dinner was awesome. After dinner we grabbed a coffee (at Starbucks… boo). After coffee we decided that we both really needed to head home and get some sleep.

A couple hours later, we had gotten cold just standing out in the parking lot, so we got into the car and turned the heater on. Eventually I actually did go back to the dorm, packed my stuff, and headed on the rest of my adventure.

We didn’t talk about anything in particular. He asked about the conference I was at. I shared some of my crazy ideas. We talked about guitars (his just got stolen, I just bought a new one).

I have to say, it was a highlight of my trip, and for no real particular reason. It wasn’t part of the plan, and some ways it ended up being a bit inconvenient (have you ever tried packing in the dark while trying not to wake your two roommates who you don’t really know). And twitter made it possible.

I have never really done anything like this before. Would I do it again? Probably. There are so many amazing things and people in the world. We need to take the opportunities we are given and not lament the ones we thought we were going to get.

So Bryan… Thanks for challenge my comfort and for a great evening of sushi, coffee, and conversation. You are back in my feedreader and while my completely unproductive life might not benefit from your GTD tips, I will enjoy your stories of Phantom Scream, your pictures, and the details of life with more enthusiasm knowing that you are more than just some random GTD blogger.

BTW… you can read Bryan’s account of this evening here.

Tags: twitter, origins, Bryan Villarin, sushi, weird