We’ve Been Cleared For Take-Off…

Welcome to View From Row 15!  I will be your hostess to the skies, Rachel. Just a midwest girl, living the desert life in Arizona and exploring our world one boarding pass at a time.

Cat’s out of the bag – Row 15 is not First Class… I know, I know I am going to lose a large conglomerate of readers who were expecting this to be a guide to luxury travel but I can assure you, you would have been gone faster than I could say “ma’am the wheels of your overhead bag need to face outwards”.

I am not your average jet setter.  Actually jet setter seems so much more bougie than what I am. I should say, “I am not your average Economy passenger” (Economy Plus on a good day, humble brag…).  I am someone who travels for pleasure at any opportunity, but these days, my work takes me away more often.   Before you profile me, I am not the girl hitting up a meeting on one coast only to have to run to catch another flight, taking calls in the terminal promising a lot of “reaching out” and “looping in” … you know, like a real business person.  I have my early mornings, some ridiculous cross country turn around trips and back-to-back travel, but I am not running through airports in stilettos or “circling back” to anyone. And don’t we all know what that office jargon really means?? In my reality “circling back” means this – I will do it when I finish my airport Chik-Fil-A and have five seconds to recharge my computer from depleting its battery on the last leg of the flight watching last night’s Real Housewives of New York (the best franchise of all cities and not open for discussion).

Now I know what you are thinking – cool, you travel, so do about 50 billion other people, what’s so special? Well, thank you so much for asking, kind reader.  We are friends now, so I can tell you something right?  I am that person on a plane… you know THAT person, chatty pants McGee.  I do, however, like to think I possess the ability to read social cues and know when someone isn’t into it, so don’t judge me yet. I come by this fate, of being a talker, honestly. I am a combination of my dad, the one-liner extraordinaire that somehow has a connection to everyone and my mom, the only person you want on your team for Trivial Pursuit because she knows just a little about a lot that she can carry on a conversation with anyone about pretty much anything.  I understand that not everyone is there to make a new friend and I am respectful of that. Somedays, I am not either.  But in one way or another, conversations have a tendency to start organically with strangers sitting next to me.  For me, compared to a lot of fliers, I have found that the adventure of getting to a destination is half the fun… did someone just nail it with a cheesy tie-in for comparing airline travel in relation to our “journey” in life!?

And that is where a View From Row 15 comes in – a snap shot of our culture sharing stories, teaching lessons, reinstating the lost art of conversations with strangers that has been tossed aside.  We have so many opportunities in a day to interact with people, it doesn’t have to be meaningful, long drawn out, life changing interactions. It is a smile, it is small talk while you wait for the bus, it is commiserating over the fact that it is mind boggling why people don’t put their carts away in parking lots (NOTE: Topic for a later post – I feel strongly about this too). 

This blog isn’t me giving advice – oh hellz no. I am no expert and don’t plan to pretend to be. I consider myself more of a conduit of an idea that I hope sparks interest and joy to look at who you are encountering and how that impacts your life.  The opportunity to encounter people from all over the world, carrying who knows what baggage (as long as it is only one personal item and one roller bag) gives you a gift you sometimes don’t even know you are getting.   

What I promise in these posts are a few laughs, a few lessons but most of all a look at people and their stories and a take away that might be deeper than the pocket on the back of those airlines seats where I inevitably lose something or touch someone else’ chewed gum every time.  Am I right??  

Please fasten your seatbelts, put your tray tables in their upright and locked positions and Row 15 is ready for take off!