Crash landing

I can’t sleep on planes. I’m not afraid of flying in the least; I just can’t fall asleep while in the air, no matter how smooth the ride. After thousands of flights I can count on one hand how many times I’ve genuinely fallen asleep.

One of those times was last week.

Following a flight delay, then cancellation, then complete rebooking on a red-eye some 11 hours later, by the time we were finally in the air I’d been awake nearly 30 straight hours. I completely zonked out.

I was woken up by a crash landing. Well, not really. It’s been said that every plane landing is really just a controlled crash. The plane doesn’t “touch down” so much as it crashes softly enough that no one gets hurt and nothing (major) breaks.

I’m always awake, and so even rougher landings don’t feel like much of anything, because I’m prepared for it. But this time I wasn’t; I was asleep! So when we touched down, rather gently in fact, I was jolted awake and experienced about three seconds of confused panic.

This is what can happen when we present our work to the world. Whether you’re turning in a paper to your professor, delivering a proposal to your boss, or trying to connect with a new person, that moment of “Here’s my work, what do you think?” is a controlled crash. The good news is if you’re awake and prepared, even a rough landing isn’t so bad.