While Not Reading

my mind gets me into trouble

Meet Maria the Monarch, a true Queen, born in my backyard on 10/15/2025. No Kings!!!

Dear Friends,

Somehow, September slipped through my typing fingers. A lot went on as usual, but on the Personal Health Front at least (unlike the National Front—pun intended), the news has been mostly good. Last week in fact, I was feeling well enough that I got on a flight for the first time in forever.

Unfortunately, after settling into my doll-sized seat on the toy airplane, I panicked: I had forgotten to download books to my kindle! I looked around frantically. Had they locked the doors? Could I still flee?

Packing the night before, I had felt like a super efficient modern traveler, tucking the (empty 🙄) kindle tidily into my backpack, No heavy paperbacks to weigh me down or rein me in. Instead, I would follow my moods and curiosity and continue to explore the miracle of the Public Library’s e-books as they beam from my phone to my kindle and my kindle to my heart. Alas, this is a romance powered by wifi and this tin can of a plane was apparently built before the internet even existed.

Having spent $5 on a bottle of water in the airport, I had smugly resisted both US and People Magazine. Another missed opportunity! Over the past 24 hours, consumed with every other travel logistic, I had, again and again, missed arguably the most important one—how to distract myself from the experience of flying.

Just writing that phrase is kind of astonishing. After all, how long ago would it have been that one would be entirely amazed by this experience? Flying. FLYING! And yet, somehow, even though I don’t do it often these days, it has become ordinary—and another part of reality that I’d rather avoid.

Here are today’s reasons:

*Generalized Fear of flying. (C’mon, 35,000 feet! The commercial airline super highway. Why do they have to tell us that anyway?)

*This plane is tiny. TINY!

*The real potential of the flight triggering any of my four concurrent vestibular disorders

*The noise! (My ears are my most diva body part)

*The seat! (I also forgot to pick my seat ahead of time and was placed in the row in front of the exit row. You know, the one where the seats don’t recline even an inch? In fact, the backrest tips a teeny bit forward, an angle at which my hip flexers murmur angrily, and on repeat. It also seems to be the one row in the plane with no window.) Well, and maybe I should have admitted this before…due to this row’s lack of appeal, (everyone else must have gone on seat guru and been just a little more proactive about their destiny) I have the only empty seat on the plane next to me. (There are always blessings.)

So here I am. Suspended. Time slowing down. Nothing to do but be. I almost miss having a seat mate on whom to train my physical and mental suffering. Almost.

I have to go to the bathroom. There’s something about the pressure up here that seems to make that inevitable, right? But when I weigh the concentration of germs in that little cubicle, against the discomfort I feel just riding it out, I stay in my teeny tiny seat.

I might as well go ahead and also confess that this flight is only 1 hour and 30 minutes long. A lifetime. The blink of an eye.

But don’t forget, we are right in the middle of a government shutdown which means that, without the balm of reading, I can’t stop picturing the angry, exhausted, understaffed air traffic controllers. I see them as jugglers; tossing an impossible number of tiny planes into the air, frantically trying to track them all and prevent them from clattering to the ground. Luckily, today the skies are apparently clear so hopefully our pilot can see what’s happening and will do his best to avoid other planes. If at all possible.

As we begin our descent I think about how, in the quaint little Asheville airport, the government shutdown and resulting traveler anxiety seemed to cause everyone to be extra nice. Maybe CBD was being piped through the vents or something, but, honestly, the local population is already just weird that way. We’ve been through a lot together. Oh, there WAS one BIG problem: Usually we have a therapy dog that roams around with his handler offering snuggles to stressed out passengers. He was conspicuously absent. I am guessing that lovely pup is also a federal employee and yet somehow considered non-essential. Something needs to be done about that.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. My flight neighbors, fore and aft, are choosing to have their window shades lowered so I’m missing the clouds and the thrill of seeing NYC swing into view. It’s okay. It all really exists inside me. I’m going to shut my eyes and practice some loving kindness meditation as we get ready to land. I’m going to place my attention in the here and now. I’m going to remember that we are actually f-ing flying. That, my friends, is a miracle.

Love,

Susan

PS: On the way home I snagged a window seat with an actual window. I remembered to put down my kindle and marvel. This view really doesn’t get old, does it?

❤️ Please help my work reach more people by liking and sharing this Free Newsletter. Honestly, it would mean a lot.