My sister babysits for two little girls who are 7 and 4 (I think). Recently, the 7-year-old asked Kendra when she was born, and she said, “1988.” To which the little girl brilliantly responded, “Wow, you were born in the NINETEENS?”

Age. Time. Years. Change. Milestones. Turning points.

I’m traveling right now on what I think will be the trip of a lifetime, and it occurred to me today how apropos it is that I’m taking it this year — my 30th year.

Three decades. It doesn’t sound like much to say it like that. But then again, I did witness the rise of the Internet and the Information Age. I mean, when I was in high school, we didn’t even have cell phones or text messaging (read with same tone as parents saying, “when I was a kid, we had to walk up hill both ways, in the snow.”) But what is that when compared to things like T.V. and men walking on the moon? (There is this paragraph comment by E.B. White that I use with my students in a revision exercise. He wrote it as a response to when man walked on the moon. You know, back in the nineteens.)

The trip. I am visiting family and friends on a three-week trek from Ohio to New Hampshire to North Carolina. The family I’m seeing are my three living grandparents, all 80, or close to it. My plan is to spend time with each of them collecting and recording family stories. (I even bought myself a handy-dandy digital recorder just for the occasion.)

But before getting to Omi’s (Mom’s mom), I spent yesterday and today with a college friend, who also lives in Ohio. Today we figured out that we’ve known each other for 12 years, just a little longer than one decade. (I have one friend who I’ve known for almost 21 years, and I know that number to the exact date because we met the day before my sister was born.) We talked about how much changes in 10 years. When we met, we were 17 and 18, freshman in college. Now she has been married for 7 years and has four kids: 6, 4, 2 and 7 months.

Omi will be 81 in July. She was born and raised in Frankfurt, Germany; moved to America in 1954.

Wonder what she’ll say has changed in eight decades.

These days, coworkers don’t have to work for the same company. As a noun, the word “coworker” typically conjures up the default image of people sitting inside little cubes.

But no more.

We are on the cusp of a new economy where workers reclaim and repurpose stale philosophies. Enter coworking, and a movement driven by creative professionals who refuse to be bound by the stodgy cubicle and the 9 to 5 schedule.

These are the people redefining “coworker.” They do all kinds of creative things; they think differently about working, business, food, economics, and even church. They are learning how to cowork in every aspect of life.

They are members of the creative class, which, as Richard Florida writes, is quickly becoming the dominating working class and will have huge economic impacts if creatives in key metropolitan areas can collaborate as a cohesive group.

The spirit behind coworking is inherent in the word, a verb: working together, collaborating. It’s more than a single location; rather it’s a way to harness this city’s Creative Class. To cowork is to collaborate – something that Sacramento desperately needs.

Note: this post is cross-published here.