Pay to Play - One of the Ways to Fly

After decades of standing in lines for security checks when I need to fly somewhere, I bit the proverbial bullet two weeks ago and signed up for an appointment to get a TSA Pre-Check number. I drove up to Toledo this afternoon for my appointment.

Things have changed when it comes to flying. A whole lot since my first trip on a commercial airline back in 1988.

When it comes to safety issues, I don't have a problem with most airlines. I'd rather sit patiently while the Detroit Airport personnel de-ice our wings a second time, rather than plunge into the frigid waters of Lake St. Clair in the middle of January. Or divert to Austin when a violent thunderstorm rattles the Bush Airport in Houston.

What I had a problem with was paying to skip the security line. It's awesome for people who can afford the fee, but it sucks for those who can't. Frankly, I've been on both sides of the equation.

So what changed my mind about paying the fee? I turn the big 6-0 soon. It's sinking into my pea-brain that my time is more valuable to me because, let's face it, I'm on the downhill slide to oblivion. And there's people I want to visit and places I want to see (again in some cases) before I lose them.

Over the next year and a half alone, four trips are already lined up, including a class I really want to go to in Las Vegas. If I can breeze through lines with my tiny overnight bag and my backpack, that's more time I can spend with my friends, check out places on my bucket list that I want to see, and revisit my old haunts.

Yep, I know I'm damn lucky to be privileged enough to have these experiences. But like Neil Gaiman's Death say, "You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime."

And I want to make the most of mine.

Everyone Starts Somewhere

I keep hearing baby writers worried about learning curves and time. It's an incredibly naive way at looking at the universe. Time marches on for every single human on this planet. The only question is what do you do with that time.

Or maybe I really did get lucky. You see I didn't have grandparents or even great-grandparents that quit living when they reached a certain age. One grandmother didn't graduate high school, but she could give most botanists and ornithologists a run for their money. The other grandmother worked her way through college during the Great Depression. One great-grandfather literally farmed until the day he died at the age of 92.

I got in a discussion/argument during a science ethics class with the professor. At what age do you quit? Quit learning. Quit growing. Quit living. My point was they are all the same thing. His argument was people get tired or they've reached a peak and they stop. The problem is we are both right.

Some people create their own timer of when to stop living. Or writing.

And it's not a function of age either. It's what you decide. Not what other people think.

When I was in law school, I was in in my thirties. I didn't have a whole lot in common with the students fresh out of college. No, I hung out with the other students who treated law as a second or third career. The folks in their forties through their sixties.

It doesn't matter when you start writing or publishing. You need to learn the craft and master the tools. You're still going to be ten years older a decade from now whether you write and study or not. If you don't want to write, that's fine. But do it or don't do it because that's what you want. Not because you're whining that it's going to take too long.

We all start somewhere at some point in time. Go read Aesop's The Hare and the Tortoise is you need some perspective.

Time Blurs

Perception of time.

It's different for everyone, and it really depends on the circumstances. As a teenager, the last five minutes of the last period of the day drags on until it seems eternal. But if you're having a blast with your friends, the hour of your curfew comes way too soon.

When I'm writing and I'm so far in the zone I'm living my heroine's life, it can feel like days have passed in a matter of hours. Or maybe I'm writing an intense stand-off before the protagonist and the antagonist in the book that takes a matter of minutes. I look up, shocked to find it's dark outside. Or more likely in my case, dawn has broken.

Normal, day-to-day living usually doesn't provide that odd feeling of time displacement. Or rather, it didn't used to.

With the pandemic entering it's third year and me having to isolate, the feeling of being temporally off from the rest of the world has intensified. If I think of calling or texting someone, I need to check a clock so I'm not waking them.

Genius Kid says he experiences something similar when he works night shift. He has to stop himself from calling us on his days, or rather nights, off. Though as DH pointed out, if GK calls before four a.m., I'm probably still up.

And I've given up on living everyone else's hours. It's just not working for me.

So I'm waking an hour or two before DH gets off work, and I deal with the administrative tasks of Angry Sheep. We have dinner, watch a little TV before he plays video games to relax while I do some writing sprints with a friend. We watch the first half of Stephen Colbert (if it's a first-run episode), and DH goes to bed. I jump into work--writing, editing, and/or online classes. Sometime, I do all three on a given night. Then I go to bed two-three hours before DH's alarm goes off.

Unless I have a medical appointment. I try to set those as early as I can so I stay awake for it, then go to bed when I get home. Or I sleep a few hours, go to the appointment, and crash on my recliner for the rest of my "night".

Time and our perception of it are such weird things.