A friend of mine is a pilot. He has told me some p-r-e-t-t-y amazing stories about flying airplanes. Early in his career he had to land a plane with one of its engines on fire. He makes flying in and out of the extreme cold of the far north sound easy. I’ve started thinking of him as a ‘Han Solo’ type. You need nerves of steel, excellent concentration, and laser sharp focus to do his job.
I’ve never flown an actual airplane, but a lot of the time work feels like the equivalent of having a lot of planes in the air. Lately, I’ve been experiencing some turbulence. You see, the past two years this phase of my work cycle has not been executed because of Covid closures. It is granular work. There are a lot of fine details, and it takes sharp focus to make sure things don’t slip through the cracks.
I guess I’m more like an air traffic controller, really. I’m trying to safely land all my projects. It used to be a super-power to juggle so many contracts and details, but my skills are a rusty. I feel like some of my synapses aren’t firing, and the neurological pathways are incomplete.
My friend in aviation is subject to retraining after an absence from the air. He has to go through simulated scenarios and retesting of procedures. After all, people’s lives are literally on the line. My job may not involve that level of potential human peril, but what I do is still important, and I take pride in doing it well. I just haven’t had to get all these planes on the ground for the past 33 months. This re-training is in real-time. There is no simulation.
I’ve come to understand our capacity has an ebb and flow. After running my business for 20 years and expanding my skills constantly, my capacity felt immense. I guess it only makes sense after not being able to do certain things for so long, that capacity literally shrunk. That is, to say the least, humbling. I know it will expand again, and things will feel more normal, eventually, but for now, I am hanging on, and giving myself a lot of personal pep talks.
No matter how hard it gets, no matter how bumpy the ride is–even if there’s an engines is on fire, I am determined to bring these planes in for a smooth landing.
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