Conversation with a Stranger- Inspo Nuggets From the Universe Part 2
La Dolce Vita
Networking can be dreadful and invigorating at the same time. Meeting one person has the potential to change the trajectory of your life. Have you ever received the most brilliant “inspo” nugget conversing with a stranger? In March 2023 at the Rogue Women VI Authenticity to Fuel Growth conference, I had a moment.
I signed up for this event for three reasons, it was free, it was held next door to Grand Central Terminal and Sally Krawcheck was the keynote. I have respected and admired Sally Krawcheck across her career and love her current passion of running a financial company built by women, for women.
One thing I knew for certain is that I would be 20 years older than almost everyone else in the room, but I pride myself on playing nice in the generational sandbox and so I mingled. Eventually, I saw another woman about my age and she was wearing a dress that I had also owned at one point. I had always loved that dress and eventually chucked it because it was worn and washed so many times it pilled. That is — hand to heart — the only reason I went over to her and struck up a conversation. I could have just sat down at that point and scrolled on my phone.
We got past the introductions and the “what do you do” blah blah, we were both not working full time at the moment. I told her how in 2022 I had a vacation to Italy and it had just opened my eyes completely. A lot has been written about the Italian wake-up call for Americans as of late, eat the carbs, embrace the social lifestyle, chose local and delicious foods, enjoy screen-free mealtime, embrace leisure pursuits, and take an evening walk for conversation with a friend or loved one. I will risk sounding like a cliche, but I too had a core, life-changing moment at a little cafe on the banks of the Arno River in Florence.
My husband, son, and I were hot and tired from a full day of enjoying the city and we stopped for an aperitivo. I sat facing the rest of the tables with the river on my left and what happened next was beautiful. A group of construction workers, dusty and sweaty, sat down with their Spritz in a Solo cup or bottle of beer and they chatted, smoked some cigarettes, and laughed. Two working couples met up. A mom met her husband with the baby in the stroller. A few tourists gathered for the Italian version of happy hour, but this was primarily locals.
It was barely past five o’clock, and the place was jammed with happy people sitting along the banks of the river enjoying each other’s company. There was so much chatter. No one was alone and sitting there scrolling on a phone. Happy hour was social hour. This wasn’t rise and grind, this wasn’t werk, werk, werk, werk, and this definitely wasn’t living to work. It was working to live and people were living.
I told my networking buddy that I knew right then and there that I had to quit my job, my life in the States looked nothing like this and I wanted this. She asked me when I went to Italy and when I quit. I told her March and September, respectively. She smiled and said that she went to Italy in June and quit her job in November. My next thought was “This is a thing” and then “I wonder if there is a book here.”
I spent a couple of months thinking about a book, what would I write? The answer was a chronology of wake-up calls to improve my life starting in January 2022. A book had always been a bucket list item of mine. Right around the second week of May 2023, an entire framework of the book dropped into my head and I just started writing. I happened to be between projects and the next thing I knew I had a 60,000-word manuscript. Not sure what comes next for this manuscript, but if I had not met this woman at a conference, that I learned about last minute through my LinkedIn newsfeed, I would probably not have crossed “finish a book” off my life goals list.
Talk to strangers. Take a walk. Live socially. Work less. Eat the fucking pasta.
