Managing Energy

AOPA Gallery- Cessna 172

In the slur and flurry and noise of the last few months- acquisition, new team, client reorganization- I've neglected this small space in the atmosphere. Let's not ignore all the changes on the homefront, too, with The Boy and his friends crashing through the evenings and weekends, pushing the boundaries and riding the rollercoaster of adolescence, accelerating their trip to adulthood one more notch, adding throttle to testosterone, piling on bone and muscle and talent and scaring everyone, including themselves.  They crowd into my kitchen and they crowd into my head, and I adore them, but maybe tonight I'd like to listen to some acoustic vibrations, maybe tonight I don't need to amplify a thing.  A little John Gorka resonating in these four walls against a wooden floor in a small town on the wet side of a mountain on the last day of summer, and I can write, and share a little of the new vocabulary I've been acquiring.

For about six months, the world, Ivan, my parents and my boss had been letting me know, in gentle suggestions and quiet klaxons that while they thought what I was doing was terrific, it was going to burn me out, and it was scaring the hell out of everyone else, including a few of my clients and more than a few of my friends.  The adrenaline I needed to function was creeping up like the doses of caffiene I was drinking to stay awake, and relaxing made me panicky and miserable.  Work was an obsession; like a crush, I found it endlessly fascinating, then nauseating in its inescapable repetition.  I caught myself in patterns I'd seen trap my parents, and then realized, with a start, that I was nearly the same age as they were when their lives had entered the inexorable flat spin of midlife crisis.

I trust Ivan; I trust this boss;  I trust my father's escape from his need for control. Trusting the nature of this world takes some getting used to, however. Hearing their advice was difficult, addressing it within the scope of my own limitations was harder.  Tension is what holds my world together-  How do you become "less intense" without losing physically and emotional integrity and flying into a thousand disparate pieces? The parents who told me that if I fell asleep in the back seat, the car would crash, created something; the lover who trusts in my success has nurtured something; the boss who congratulates me for taking the cares of a failing account on my shoulders and working myself into the ground to make it successful is also forging something- mainly, the idea that I have the power to control my destiny.  But also, the idea if I don't control it, "it" will fail. Explode. Detonate. Whatever "it" may be. 

And I like my thrills. I like the feeling of brand new.  New countries, scary places, things I've never done before.  Coupled with a deep need to adhere to moral and technical legalities, you can see where I might feel conflicted as the years and opportunities glide along.  Words never heard and thoughts untested make me salivate.  Unforged territory,  intellectual or otherwise, makes me weak in the knees, makes my jaw clench with the tension between desire for discovery and the need for self-control. I recognize that the environment I love may also be disorienting and nauseating for others, and I wouldn't want to inflict them with the source of my delight, but I NEED it.

I wrestled with all of the things I needed to learn and to trust, and the things that I wanted, and the things I have to face, and the things that I am.  I thought about what might help teach me, in new words and new ideas I could rattle like dice in my head.  Something to give me perspective, let me see the whole picture, that would not afford me the luxury of panic, and would let me glide on the lovely tension between letting go of the controls and navigating my destiny.

Last week I started ground school at the little airport down the road from my office, and I've taken two of the forty to sixty hours my private pilot license will require.  I knew I'd done the right thing when the ground school instructor's first lesson began with the statement, "Piloting is nothing more or less than managing energy."

In the office, words like parasitic drag, critical angle of attack, yaw and positive dynamic stability roll langorously about in the rapid fire of stressed synapses.  If I need adrenalin, I call up the airport and schedule a lesson. Every week I do something I've never done before, something beautiful and terrifying and sometimes idiotic. Sometimes I even give up control when I feel I'm out of my element. I've learned that when the engine stalls, you can get pretty far gliding, and it's a hell of a lot quieter.  I turn off the Black (crack)berry on the ground and I learn how to trust the horizon for direction and the air supporting me for lift.

I might fail.  And that possibility, as usual, is the best part.

10:15:40 PM