Welcome to The Interview Month!

Hello!  Welcome to back to my annual January blog adventure. In 2012, I celebrated a different holiday each day in January, according to when they took place throughout the year. Those exploits can be found here.  In 2013, I did something that I had never done before each day, details of which can be found here.  In 2014, I had someone teach me how to do something new each day. Those lessons can be found here. In 2015, I did something every day to prepare for the birth of my son, Elliot. Those stories can be found here.  And in 2016, I cooked a meal from a different country each day. You can get the recipes and results here.

2016 was a pretty crazy year, right? There were tremendous highs and equally tremendous lows. We lost incredible musicians and stars of stage and screen. There were senseless acts of violence, and amazing acts of heroism. Cleveland got a sports championship after many years of trophy drought, and the Cubs won the World Series (the folks in Back to the Future, Part II were just a year off!). Stranger Things blew our minds, and Jon Snow lived (sorry for the spoiler). 

And, obviously, we elected a new president this year.  Well, some of us voted for him, and for that group of people, their anger and frustration about being left behind and ignored finally found a voice. For those that didn't vote for the winner, we were left feeling blindsided. How did something like this happen?  How did we get this so wrong?

Time magazine named Donald Trump the Person of the Year, calling him "The President of the Divided States of America."  How did we become so divided? In my opinion, it's because we stopped talking to one another. That doesn't mean talking at or over each other, it means listening and empathizing as well.

Think about it.  How many of you have been out to dinner with friends and family, only to find that you and that group of friends and family are constantly checking phones to see what else is going on? How many people do you pass at work and, while you say hi to them, have no idea what their name is and who they really are? How may of you are reading this right now while in the company of an actual human being that you could be talking to instead (Go talk to them! You won't hurt my feelings!).

Social media is a deceptive term, because our Facebook feeds and the people we follow on Twitter and the news that we watch are all tailored to spit the information we agree with back at us. It's a loop, and this year made me realize how out of touch it's made me become with a large portion of this country.

So, as always with these month long projects, I wanted to start my year off with a fresh start and a fresh mindset. To that end, for the next 31 days, I will interview 31 people from all walks of life. Most will be strangers, but some will be the people that I bump into a work and have never talked to beyond "Thank you for helping get my computer working again."  Some will be friends that I have lost touch with beyond the "Happy Birthday" message that I write on Facebook. I'll ask them each the same five questions to get the conversation started, and then see where it goes from there.

My goal will be to try to reach beyond my social comfort zone and talk to people that have experiences different than my own.  And in doing so, I hope to make a connection and have an understanding of a different point of view. I won't learn anything by having my own views reaffirmed over and over again, so hopefully this project will help me learn more about myself and about the people that I share this world with.

Here's to a great start to 2017, and to some great conversations!