Yesterday I had online conversations with 3 people in 3 different places, in the span of an hour or two:
- I discussed Japanese pens with a former student. (She’s in Los Angeles.)
- I learned about a really old friend’s new interest in genealogy. (She’s in Göteborg, Sweden.)
- I helped an online acquaintance find a person in Sweden using only that person’s email address. (She’s in Arkansas somewhere, I think. I don’t know her beyond our mutual interest in online sleuthing around the history of the mysterious Captain William Matson, the man without a past*.)
I completely love how I’m able to talk about random things, answer random calls for help, or just keep lines of conversation open with people. It’s instantaneous and deeply satisfying because it really does keep me connected to different parts of my life, and different times in my life. I can’t imagine being an emigrant and an immigrant without it.
* Matson is said to have been born in Lysekil, Sweden, in 1849, but there is absolutely zero trace of him in Swedish records. So, who was he before he became a Master Mariner and the founder of the Matson Line in San Francisco in the 1880s?