Ground Stop.
Year Two. Month Twelve. #PNW.
I was following my friends in Denver on social media yesterday when a freak snow storm hit the area, slowing traffic, canceling flights and essentially shutting down the city. Friends lamented the unexpected weather with exclamations such as "but it was seventy degrees yesterday!" and "it's almost April, this shouldn't be happening!"
I saw people tweeting updates from their cars on the side of the highway, where the storm had caused a parking lot-type effect. I saw desperate postings on our shift board, with people offering hundreds of dollars to anyone who could make it to work for them, because commuting had become impossible.
And then the big announcement came: Denver International Airport was being shut down indefinitely.
Ground stop.
Sometimes in life, you gotta just accept all the crazy weather and mechanicals and flow (so to speak), and accept a ground stop as well.
Lately, I've been feeling overwhelmed. I've been working 120 to 130 hours a month. I've been away from home up to twenty-five days a month. My body aches from long hours on my feet and my back is all out of alignment. My commute feels longer and longer every time I drive those ninety miles to the airport and I find myself gulping more coffee than I should, just to keep my eyes open during the endless days and nights I spend on airplanes.
(Calling out fatigued as a flight attendant is not yet something that the FAA backs us on, so if I wake up feeling exhausted, it's either an extra shot of espresso or a red mark on your record if you ask to be taken off of a trip.)
So I take that extra shot of espresso and take on my day.
So yeah, I'm tired. But it's not the first time that I've dealt with fatigue in this job, and tens of thousands of other stews live a life of genuine fatigue every day.
But there's something else. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the grey skies here in the Pacific Northwest, or the fact that Spring is right around the corner, but (as evidenced by Denver) not quite here yet. Maybe it's the feeling of waiting on something, but I don't know quite what.
With everything that's been going on, you would think that my creative energy would be flowing.
But it's not. It's really not. As many of you know, I'm working on a book on how I got into this crazy career. It was going so well. I've been writing and pouring out my memories onto the pages, but about two weeks ago I hit a wall.
Ground stop.
Maybe I'm going about this book all wrong. Maybe I need to throw out the outline and write how I blog: free form and flowing and terrible grammar and run on sentences.
Or perhaps I need to start from the present and work my way backwards, remembering the adventures as I come across them in my mind.
Or maybe I just need to walk away from the whole thing for a while.
Maybe I need to accept this ground stop and let the Universe take over.
Happy flying!
I was following my friends in Denver on social media yesterday when a freak snow storm hit the area, slowing traffic, canceling flights and essentially shutting down the city. Friends lamented the unexpected weather with exclamations such as "but it was seventy degrees yesterday!" and "it's almost April, this shouldn't be happening!"
I saw people tweeting updates from their cars on the side of the highway, where the storm had caused a parking lot-type effect. I saw desperate postings on our shift board, with people offering hundreds of dollars to anyone who could make it to work for them, because commuting had become impossible.
And then the big announcement came: Denver International Airport was being shut down indefinitely.
Ground stop.
Sometimes in life, you gotta just accept all the crazy weather and mechanicals and flow (so to speak), and accept a ground stop as well.
Lately, I've been feeling overwhelmed. I've been working 120 to 130 hours a month. I've been away from home up to twenty-five days a month. My body aches from long hours on my feet and my back is all out of alignment. My commute feels longer and longer every time I drive those ninety miles to the airport and I find myself gulping more coffee than I should, just to keep my eyes open during the endless days and nights I spend on airplanes.
(Calling out fatigued as a flight attendant is not yet something that the FAA backs us on, so if I wake up feeling exhausted, it's either an extra shot of espresso or a red mark on your record if you ask to be taken off of a trip.)
So I take that extra shot of espresso and take on my day.
So yeah, I'm tired. But it's not the first time that I've dealt with fatigue in this job, and tens of thousands of other stews live a life of genuine fatigue every day.
But there's something else. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the grey skies here in the Pacific Northwest, or the fact that Spring is right around the corner, but (as evidenced by Denver) not quite here yet. Maybe it's the feeling of waiting on something, but I don't know quite what.
With everything that's been going on, you would think that my creative energy would be flowing.
But it's not. It's really not. As many of you know, I'm working on a book on how I got into this crazy career. It was going so well. I've been writing and pouring out my memories onto the pages, but about two weeks ago I hit a wall.
Ground stop.
Maybe I'm going about this book all wrong. Maybe I need to throw out the outline and write how I blog: free form and flowing and terrible grammar and run on sentences.
Or perhaps I need to start from the present and work my way backwards, remembering the adventures as I come across them in my mind.
Or maybe I just need to walk away from the whole thing for a while.
Maybe I need to accept this ground stop and let the Universe take over.
Happy flying!
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