Clear Air Turbulence

I would presume that any of you who have had the occasion to fly very much have had the disagreeable experience of finding a nice rough pocket of sky in the middle of a cloudless blue day.  No rhyme nor reason for it, and I don't think there's really a good scientific explanation for them.  Just a rough ride masked by over-lying calm.  I feel like maybe 2011 has been like that.  A veneer of calm and success when what's really going on is a damn bumpy ride.

I'm ending this year much the way I felt at the end of 2005.  That year was a tough; lousy job situation, rough year at home, nearly got killed and spent half the year recovering.  Just ended up feeling exhausted and totally sandblasted.  Also at the end of the year I changed jobs, much as I am doing now.

This year, it's been the same tough job situation, same drama at home, except there's two spawn instead of one, same trying to find my way in life.  I guess I managed not to try to get myself killed in 2011, though I guess I did a few kinda dangerous things, and had a few close scrapes, but just didn't end up with any good scars to tell the tales.

And all of it looking like it's flying through nice calm skies.  It gets old after a while, things looking good, but being jarred about, white knuckling the arm rests.  Or worse, just sitting and waiting, knowing that there's that air pocket sitting out there, invisible, waiting to slam the plane down a few hundred feet in the blink of an eye, and ruin my barely managed sense of calm.  One way or the other, you get off the plane feeling like you've been put through the wringer.

2006 managed to be a pretty good year.  I liked what I was doing for the first time in a while.  I started to find myself a little bit.  But it's certainly different now.  I've reshuffled myself once, maybe twice since then.  I am certainly not the same person.  So I guess we'll see.  I'm going into this with a sense of anticipation, but also trepidation.  Am I on the path?


As I come back to this post some days later, I chuckle to see my typo.  I meant to write "Am on the right path."  Perhaps I should have should have capitalized the "P".  Am I on the the Path?  Frankly, I still don't know.  I become less certain of all but a very few absolute rights and wrongs every day, so I'll just settle for the Path, wherever it leads, as long as I'm on it.  I've got a decent pair of boots, a pretty good compass, and I can read a map.  I guess I'll just start walking.


Forgive me.  I'm not all the way awake, and now I'm mixing metaphors, or some such thing, and just writing the words as they fall out of my head.  Flying, walking.  Sitting and waiting versus plotting my own course.  Here's what I think I really need to do: stay off of metaphorical airplanes; sitting, waiting, fearing.  Keep my feet on terra firma; use my tools, forge ahead on a bearing of my choice, select my own terrain instead of trying to fly over it.


The weather isn't always good on the ground, but at least you're not strapped into a chair watching it happen.  That's fine, I'll take my ability to deal with it over somebody else's.  One week to a way-point.  If there's not a cairn there, I will build one, shoot my bearing, and start walking.  Forget airplanes.  Time to move under my own power.


-Grey