Back To Earth

Hello Rock Stars. Wow, what a great job you all did yesterday with the inspiration station; some pretty insightful, motivating and clever stuff there. Thanks for sharing and for giving us a little snapshot of… you. Nice. Feel free to keep adding to the list today. We will announce the winners of the books in the next day or two, so stay tuned.

So I just got back from Sydney (writing this late Monday) and boy, did I have an interesting flight. I sat next to a groovy senior citizen who clearly wasn’t impressed with the whole ‘Craig Harper Show’! I didn’t ask her age (too scared) but I guessed her to be somewhere in the mid seventies range. Her name is Marj (short for Marjorie), she has four kids (two of each), eleven grand kids, has just spent a week in Sydney getting to know her first great grand daughter, is a widow of five years and hates flying.

For the first ten minutes of our flight to Melbourne Marj looked intently out her window and didn’t seem to be enjoying the whole plane experience. At one stage she turned to me and I smiled. It seemed to snap her out of her anxiety. Momentarily. She informed me that she didn’t enjoy flying at all. We started to chat and I think she was relieved to have something or someone to distract her from the impending and unavoidable plane crash.

Marj and I spoke for the best part of an hour and she totally cracked me up. Although she didn’t mean to. She was hilarious without even knowing it. Dry, funny, intense, honest and sincere. Obviously I can’t recall an hour of dialogue word for word (neither do we want to hear it) but I thought you might appreciate some of my ‘Marj highlights’:

Somewhere over New South Wales…

M: “Where do you work?”
C: “Everywhere”
M: “What do you do… everywhere?”
C: “I speak to companies, teams, schools and all kinds of organisations”
M: “About what?”
C: “About how to create better results in their world”
M: (trying to digest what I had said)… “and that’s a job?”
C: “Yep”
M: “Do they pay you for that?”
C: “Yep”
M: “Really?”
C: (laughing).. “crazy I know but yep, they pay me”
M: “Do you do anything else?”
C: “I write”
M: (looks me up and down).. “Write what?”
C: “I write for a few magazines and I’ve written some books”
M: (looks at me with disbelief) “You have written books?”
C: (more laughing) “Yep, me”
M: “Does anyone read them?”
C: (still laughing) “A few people”
M: “You don’t look like a writer”
C: “Really (laughing my ass off now), what does a writer look like?”
M: “Thinner and smaller than you”
C: (nearly falling out of my chair) “Thinner?”
M: “Yes, usually” (clearly Marj had researched writers and their body types)
C: “What kind of job do I look like I should be doing Marj?”
M: “A removalist”
C: “A removalist?”
M: “Yes you know, those men who move pianos and beds”
C: “Yes, I know”

A little later….

M: “What does that mean?” (pointing to my craig-harper-dot-com shirt)
C: “I have a website”
M: “A what?”
C: “A website”
M: “I don’t know what that is”
C: “Well, my site is actually a Blog (stupid of me I know) which is kind of like a constantly updated on-line journal or magazine.”
M: (looking blankly) “What’s on-line?”
C: “You know, computers”
M: “Oh, I hate them”
C: “Okay”
M: “Don’t you think it’s vain to have your own name on your shirt?”
C: “It didn’t occur to me”
M: “I think it is”

A few more minutes pass by….

M: “So who reads what you write on your computer?”
C: “Well, we actually have a pretty big on-line community… er readership base”
M: “How many people?”
C: “Nearly 100,000 readers per week”
M: “No?”
C: “Yep”
M: “I don’t believe you” (absolutely serious)
C: (more laughs)

And a little later…

M: “How old are your children?”
C: “I don’t have any?”
M: “Why not?”
C: “I’m not married”
M: “What’s wrong with you?”
C: “Plenty!” (laughing)
M: (not laughing) “You’re not young you know. You should hurry up!”
C: “Perhaps you could introduce me to one of your daughters Marj” (smirk on my face)
M: (shaking her head in the negative) “I don’t think so Mr Writer” (completely serious)
C: “Okay”

The last bit…

So by the time we touched down in Melbourne tonight, not only was my body back to earth but so was my ego. If I ever start to get a fat head, can somebody give Marj a call for me. Thanks.

And thanks to you Marj.

Ciao x

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