Surely You Can’t Be Serious
I don’t travel a lot. It’s hard to travel consistently and still be on the radio. However, in the last few years Kristian and I have enjoyed some small travel time for vacations. My friend Ian, on the other hand, travels a lot! His job takes him to many places around the world and I’m jealous. Earlier this summer, Kristian and I and Ian and his wife booked an Alaskan cruise. And it was amazing!
We had to fly to Seattle to get on the ship. For Ian and his wife, no big deal because they travel more than we do. For Kristian and myself, a bigger deal because we don’t fly much. The only thing that made it a bigger deal for us was making sure we packed a weeks worth of clothes into two carry-ons and making sure we had all of our travel documents. Easy peazy. Kind of.
I’m a bit of a time freak. I want to say that time is one of my biggest quirks and annoyances. On the programming side of radio, timing is essential. To program a station you need content and clocks. Each hour of the 24 we’re given has to be planned out with music, content, and commercials. So to say I’m aware about time is an understatement.
I like for things to start on time as well, whether that’s meetings, movies, concerts, etc. If something doesn’t start on time I begin to get antsy and annoyed, then become completely disinterested and done.
What does that to do with travel? You can probably guess.
The flights to Seattle were perfect - taking off and landing on time. Getting on to the boat in our allotted time, perfect. Porting into the Alaskan cities within the boats schedule, perfect. Traveling back home from Seattle, not so perfect.
I could feel the knots in my stomach getting tighter every minute that passed while we were sitting on the flight to come home from Seattle and the plane not departing. Ten minutes on the taxiway became twenty and twenty became thirty. We had a connecting flight in Atlanta that I was concerned about not making. I’m wringing my hands and yelling on the inside and Ian is almost asleep. We finally took off from Seattle and made it to Atlanta with less than thirty minutes to get off the plane, walk a mile and make it to the gate. Somehow we made it to the connecting gate for the flight in Atlanta that would bring us home to Montgomery with a few minutes to spare. Surprise! It was delayed. And a few minutes later - Surprise! It was canceled.
So now we’re frantically trying to rent a car in Atlanta and drive home to Montgomery at almost midnight - and by the way, I had to be at work at four in the morning.
I was stressed and angry. We texted Ian and his wife. Their flights were delayed as well, but they were not stressed and angry. I think Ian had the gall to text us something like - that happens sometimes when you travel.
Move forward to this week. I’m reading a book about psychological whatnots and being flexible and seeing things from the right perspective.
Here are a couple of things I’ve learned…
My conditioned reactions and behavior to what happens in life out of my control is just that, a conditioning. It doesn’t make it right or wrong, It’s just the way it is. Why should I expect the airline and all of the myriad of moving parts in front and behind the scenes to adhere to my conditions? Ridiculous, huh?
There’s no point in expecting or demanding things like time or circumstances all fall in line to what I expect. Again, how ridiculous and entitled am I to think otherwise.
Ian was right - things like that happens when you travel. Things like what? Things like life. Things like problems and issues. Things like timing being off. Things that you can’t control or prepare for. But it’s not just when you’re’ traveling, it’s in living and breathing everyday. Sometimes life and situations are not perfect. You just have to accept it for what it is can carry on.
Surely you can’t be serious. I am serious and… don’t call me Shirley!
