This blog is just over ten years old. That means it’s time once again to think about September 11, 2011. It’s easy to remember how I felt watching everything from my hotel room in Tokyo, because I wrote about it.
I used this space to keep in touch with people I was separated from by airport closures and overwhelming fear. Lately I’ve been missing the habit of writing, putting my thought in words rather than audio or video. I don’t need a disaster or anniversary to make that happen again.
There’s little I can say here to add any clarity to how people feel about 9/11. I didn’t lose anybody that day. My attitude towards flying never changed (I was back on an airplane in October 2001). My feelings about personal freedom are perhaps a bit stronger, but my basic core never changed.
In other words, I kept on living. I’ve seen bullies before, grew up with them. The bullies from ten years ago didn’t change what I wanted to do with my life, just the same as the ones from grade school.
Tonight my friend Jennifer flies to San Francisco. Tomorrow I do the same. We’ll share time in the same town as I work a trade show and she takes a break before starting a new job. I’ll see co-workers and colleagues, work some long hours and have a few drinks with friends. I’ll have a life, the one I chose to have no matter what bullies think they can do.
When the writing picks up here again it will be about travel, photography, videos, horses, cats and horribly built trucks that need regular trips to the mechanic. But some of it may be more serious, more heartfelt. The past ten years brought me more than just memories of a hotel room on Tokyo … it brought me closer to the people that met me once I came home.
9/11 is a point in time. I won’t ignore it but it won’t define me.
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