I just want to fly

Wednesday night I did something I very rarely do. (A subset of which could include, but is not limited to: scrubbing the toilets, rotating my wardrobe for the different seasons, reading the New Yorker, and things my husband would prefer I not expand upon).

I went to a "meet up" hosted by the incomparable Holly Fink and company. We met at The Voracious Reader, a quaint independent bookstore in Larchmont, (yes, there are still a few left). Rhonda Hurwitz was the speaker and she was talking on the topic of Klout and other social metrics all of which give me yet another way to feel like the girl desperately looking around the lunch room for a seat, with a tray of jello and tater tots feeling hopelessly uncool.

But that's just me. I gave up analyzing my analytics ages ago and you know what? For me, ignorance is bliss. So long as I'm not entirely aware of how irrelevant I am I can maintain the belief that what I write here, or anywhere, is being devoured by hoards of adoring fans.

But this isn't about that stuff. This is about how stimulating it was to being around smart, switched-on, people. Small business owners, interior designers, social media experts. I wish we had all had more time to chat, because I left feeling so inspired from connecting with these people.

Women who may or may not have had kids. I don't know since no time was spent discussing them. They all lived somewhere I assume, but not in my school district, so the conversation was not dominated by talk of budget cuts and tenure candidates.

This morning I had coffee with a woman I recently met. She is brilliant, beautiful, ambitious, and if I could think of a reason to hate her for all of that I would, but honestly she's just fantastic. And I don't know if it was the Guatemalan-African blend or the stimulating conversation, but I felt energized when we said goodbye.

On my way out of the coffee shop I ran into Jeff Pearlman, a frenetic, funny, honest-to-God author, who always makes my brain feel like it's stumbling to keep up pace with the twists and turns of the rapid-pace exchange. And that was awesome.

Which is not to say in any way, shape or form that my mom friends are not bright, interesting, fun women to be around. I can't stress that enough. But the reality is that most of the time the conversations default to the kids, the school, taxes, construction, vacation plans and my brain goes on autopilot.

But I want to have to actively fly the plane. In fact, I want to have to work damn hard to fly the plane.

Which is on me, because I can't fly the plane if I'm not getting my ass to the airport.

So, 2012--I will connect, engage, learn, laugh, be inspired, grow and fly, baby, fly.