When you do something that you have never done before, unexpected results take place.
Okay, that isn’t always true. If that were actually the case, no one would ever go skydiving -- ever. Let me try to start over.
Sometimes we do things, and when we do those things, other things happen in a way that we didn’t think would happen.
I don’t like that one either. It is a little too wordy. One more try.
Every now and again, the unexpected happens.
Okay, we’ll settle with that one.
Every now and again, the unexpected happens. Even less often, we are the initiator of such an phenomenon. This can be very exciting, and a little terrifying.
Fourty-Eight hours ago, I decided to do something that I have never done before. I realized that I have been wasting a lot of time on the internet playing games, mindlessly surfing the web or browsing Facebook.. I needed direction. I needed a goal.
So... I gave myself a goal.
For those of you that don’t know much about Facebook, there is a something called “a wall.” My parents do not have a Facebook account, so I have had to describe the Facebook “wall” feature to them in words that they can understand.
Imagine, if you will, a world where all of your friends live in the same building. Better yet, you and all of your friends live in a giant hallway - kind of like a floor in a hotel. Everyone has their own room, and you can walk down the halls and visit your friends. Just like you, all of your friends have their own lives, so they are not in their room all of the time. (Although, some are in their room more than others.) Whether they are home or not, you can leave a little note on their door.
Leaving a note on someone’s door is the equivalent of “writing on someone’s wall” in Facebook terminology.
In my Facebook world, I have a hallway with approximately 600 doors. Every so often, I will walk down that hallway, and leave a nice post-it note with something written on it.
“Happy Birthday!” “Hey, I have a joke for you.” “Did you get the e-mail I sent you?”
You know, things like that.
I gave myself a goal. I gave myself a mission.
My mission was to leave a little note on every single door in my hallway of friends.
I also decided that every single message was going to be unique. I was not going to leave the same message on two different doors. Some of the writings might have been similar, but no two were identical.
I started where anyone with obsessive compulsive tendencies would start: the letter A.
I soon realized that I had a lot of friends named Aaron.
I would write something unique, then move on to someone else. Sometimes I would say something short and sweet. Sometimes I would write about a memory I had with that person. Sometimes I would even say, “I don’t know you that well, we have friends in common, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in real life.” Sometimes it was really hard to write something meaningful. Sometimes I didn’t write anything meaningful.
Long story short, in about 36 hours I wrote almost 600 unique messages, each to a different person.
This whole mission started with a simple idea, “I need some kind of direction.”
I did something that I have never done before.
Something crazy happened though: people started replying. 48 hours ago, I did not have a new e-mail in my inbox. As I am writing this, I have 305 new e-mails in my inbox. Every single one of them is from Facebook letting me know that someone has replied to me, or has decided to come to my door and leave me a note. I also have 11 people that want to be my friend. I am flabbergasted.
I have been amazed at the replies. I never thought this would happen. I never thought about what would happen.
Now I have a new goal. I have a new mission. I am going to reply to every single e-mail.
There is a problem though: these e-mails are not stopping. They are slowly trickling into my e-mail inbox.
This is going to take a little while.
--John D.
