Not Panicking any more

For five months in 2003, I worked at a PR agency we'll call Panic - in part because that rhymes with the company's actual name, but mostly because that's the state I was in for the majority of the short time I worked there. One of my accounts was a high end jewelry company, and I shared the responsibilities with a girl in the agency's west coast office. My job was to pitch the product to the (NY-based) accessory editors for magazine coverage, while hers was to get it in the hands of (LA-based) celebrities via their stylists.

We spoke on the phone every other week or so for our client conference calls; however other than those calls and a few internal strategy sessions, we never actually met. I didn't know her well enough to stay in touch after I got a new (and better) job, and by the time I moved to LA, had either forgotten about her or just assumed she had forgotten about me.

Then, a few weeks ago, another friend in the business forwarded me an industry document, and there, on the second page, was this girl's name alongside the same client we had both worked on. Somewhere in the span of the last few years she had moved to a new agency but taken the client with her. I emailed her that afternoon, and had a response within an hour. I was going to provide my products for her gift bags, and we were going to do drinks shortly thereafter. We spent the afternoon and the next couple weeks going back and forth, chatting and gossipping, and actually striking up a professional partnership that benefitted both of our brands.

I met her this past Thursday for drinks. Going in, I wasn't sure what to expect. When I worked at Panic, I had asked others what she was like. The answer was always, "Oh, she's very LA." Nobody could ever really elaborate on what that meant, so I just assumed she'd be tall, thin, blond, one-dimensional, and very trendy. Imagine my suprise when a near carbon copy of me walked in. Definitely a bit trendier than me, but same straight dark hair, same thin but not "LA thin" body, and just a totally normal-looking girl. I could tell she was three-dimensional from the second she walked through the door and I just got a very warm, friendly vibe.

We spent about an hour catching up and really just getting to know each other. And it turned out that, at every corner of the conversation, we had even more in common than we thought. In addition to liking and not liking the same types of foods (which is unusual since I am a very picky eater), playing at the same tennis level (embarrassing) and (obviously) working in the same business, we are almost exactly one month apart in age, both from the east coast, and have nearly identically-parallel recent histories in things like when we both moved into our apartments, into our jobs, and when we both got out of our last relationships. And the weirdest part? She was AT the bar I went to on Tuesday night, and was supposed to go to the party I ended up at last Saturday. Our paths had virtually crossed twice in the last week alone!

I don't know why I am writing about this, exactly. She could end up becoming a new best friend or she could end up just as one of those peripheral work friends I only see now and again. But I love when coincidences like this happen, like it fell out of the sky and into my lap for a reason. My last few weeks have been like that, actually, one thing building on another so that almost every single thing I do feels like there is a greater purpose to it.

I don't know what that purpose is yet, but I am really enjoying the energy.