The conference had broken for lunch, and I took the time to find the most inconspicuous spot I could.  A spot almost under a staircase, out of the way of passers-by. Off the beaten path, you could say.

I pulled out my laptop, my lunch bag, my phone, and my water bottle, and logged in to my world, prepared to dive deep into my silence and knock out a chunk of emails.

Barely had I lifted the lid of my Macbook, barely had the little Apple icon flickered into existence, than I noticed a lady moving towards me. And this lady was smiling. The funny thing was, it looked like she was smiling at me.

Side Note

Let’s get one thing straight before we move on, this lady – moving towards me – was beautiful. Stunning. Beautiful ladies have no business with me unless they’re trying to sell me something. I’m not only not in their class, I’m not even on the same planet.

But she was definitely looking at me, smiling, and walking towards my table. MY table. My hidden table under the stairs.

She must think I’m someone else.

Is she squinting? Has she forgotten her glasses?

She put her hand on the back of the chair next to me. “Hey!”
I must have had that deer in the headlights look as I looked up and said “Please! Sit down.” or something similarly awkward. I really don’t remember the conversation. Maybe she asked if she could sit down. Maybe I invited her to sit, I have no recall, either way, she sat down and I proceeded to vomit a bunch of words into her lap. [People just have to say hi to me and they are pretty much guaranteed to get my life story. It’s a habit. I can’t help it. I apologize.]

But she didn’t run away. She listened. And we had a meaningful back and forth dialog, enough to discover that we are both introverts and that she was waiting for her husband, who is a copywriter. I learned he had taken some training that I was also interested in taking, and we had even both been at the same copywriting conference a few weeks prior. So we planned to meet up again later to talk more about this – see if it would be a good fit for me.

This conversation was the start of many tears for me that weekend, as her husband helped me work through – no, pushed me through some decisions I needed to make that will directly affect my future, my dream, my mindset, and my life.

I’m so grateful for that beautiful woman.

Thank you, Erica Ryal.

Photo by boram kim on Unsplash