LOL! Getting work done on a plane?!?One of my favorite bloggers is Bethany Crystal. She writes wonderful and entertaining, reflections on life through a personal and professional lens. I met Bethany in college and everything I enjoyed about knowing her, her optimism, her intelligence, and her wonderful geek-like passion about so many things in life comes through in her blog. I highly recommend following this blog.
Bethany recently wrote this blog post about flying on planes that made me laugh out loud.
I fly on planes a lot. Ever since I moved to Chicago for college, I fly at least have a dozen times a year, sometimes more. Family is important to me and going back home to visit my family is truly a respite. For the past five years, flying has included children, and for the past year, it’s included two children (and one time a dog as well). What made me laugh about Bethany’s post was less about the content of her blog, which I found to be a wonderful way to view travel, but more because of how absurdly different her approach to flying is from my current reality of traveling with my family.
Unlike Bethany there is nothing satisfying about the ritual of traveling on a plane with my children. Our rituals are many, and challenging. No matter how hard we try, we always just barely manage to be packed and ready to go about 10 minutes after we plan to leave the house.
The game is no long making sure that we didn’t forget to pack something. Instead, it’s simply making sure what we forget to pack isn’t that a big deal. This most recent trip, I forgot flip-flops, which was not a big deal. As I told Diana, at least we didn’t “home-alone,” this trip and forget a kid.
Another ritual is the security line. Sometimes TSA people see us and stick us in a line with all of the other families. This is a great idea because families in this situations really do help each other out. At the most I’ve counted we’ve used seven different bins to get all of our stuff through the x-ray machine. I sometimes feel bad for the people behind me because I am often the reason they run out of bins, or I cause a delay because I simply need more bins.
I guess it is satisfying to get through security, grab a gate check tag for a stroller, maybe grab a pack of gum, and somehow manage to get on a plane with the kids. These aren't rituals that brings me satisfaction. More than anything it brings me relief.
I would love time on a plane to do work. That would be amazing, and on a recent flight I did manage to complete a grant proposal that was due at the time the plane landed. This was done with the stress of knowing that at some point Ethan would wake up from the nap he was taking on Diana’s lap and my time would be up. It could be a two hour nap and it could be fifteen minute nap...talk about working under pressure
Just for perspective, on an eight and half hour flight with my family, (that’s five hundred and ten minutes) I had 45 minutes to finish this grant proposal, and I got through 40 minutes of a magnificent Harry Belafonte documentary. That’s 85 out of 510 that I had to myself on a plane to chill.
Bethany isn’t wrong. There is great satisfaction in ritual. The difference with traveling with a family as opposed to traveling by yourself is that the satisfaction of ritual is in the long game. No the ritual of traveling on a plane is not fun, and it’s not satisfying. However I've never regretted taking my children on a trip to spend time with my family. No matter how bad a plane flight is, (and we’ve had some doozies), I'm always proud and satisfied about the experience of travel when I see how happy my parents are to see my children, and how excited Ollie is to see his cousins.
Y'know here are little rituals of flying with children which are fun, like um…okay I can’t think of any but I’m sure if I channel a little Bethany in my outlook, I can find some kind of rituals to look forward too when traveling with my children.
Bethany, keep enjoying your rituals and your work time on the plane. I hope that you keep writing, and thanks for sharing.
You have a fan in me.
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