Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Day 102 the one with a late night flight from Chicago

2018: Day 102 the one with a late night flight from Chicago

Dear Reader,

Well here I am again sitting on an airline flight waiting for take off. Before everybody boarded i snapped the thumbnail for the blog post today. My thoughts right now are focused on traveling and writing some words related to traveling. Sure that might be an overvisted them, but at the moment that is all that is being conjured up. Last night I spent some time trying to figure out a topic that could help drive a massive 5,000 word post. This flight is like two hours long and I really wanted to just hammer at the keyboard the entire time and listen to some Pandora in the offline mode. I’m hoping that at some point doing the trip my offline stations replenish themselves. Last time I ended up listening to most of what it had for two stations. That is my best guess about the process. It did stop playing the first station after about an hour and it moved over to a different station. Maybe that is just something that it does and how it works, but given that it was the first time I had used the application in offline mode it was a learning moment.

Maybe all of this writing and working toward creating posts is really about learning. Some of it has to be about learning the rest is just a demonstration of persistence. I’m not entirely sure this effort is helping me become a better writer. Over the course of the last 100 posts my best guess is that my writing has really just stayed about the same level of quality. My thoughts about things have changed a little bit. Somewhere along the way my writing efforts are starting to focus in on delivering better stories. I’m starting to think about the overall theme of the essay that is being written. Maybe that is the topic for today. It is a topic about focusing in and thinking about picking a direction and sticking with it. That is probably a valid lesson to think about. Imagination is one of the most powerful forces in the universe today. That spark of creativity has the potential stored up in it to change the world and maybe just maybe make a dent in the universe. That turn of phrase has a certain meaning to a certain group of folks. For me it really does seem to be something to aspire to achieving.

It seems like everybody has pretty much boarded the airplane. Folks took an awful long time loading on the airplane today. For better or worse that is something that caught my attention. The things that catch my attention these days seem to be getting more and more unrelated to things that are important. That is probably something that I need to work on and resolve. My attention should only be focused on important and impactful things. Maybe that is easier to write about than to actually achieve. The more energy I expand on driving things forward the more likely it is for something to catch my attention and create a distraction. These seats are really close together in the back of this airplane. My knees are pretty much touching the seat in front of me and my Chromebook screen is for sure touching the seat in front of me.

My Warren Zevon Radio station is really great fight now in offline mode. I’m thinking about switching over to, “Shout: The very best of Tears for Fears album,” but I’m not feeling that is completely necessary. It does seem like it might be prudent today. Ok —- I’m going to switch over and listen to the first few tracks during tack off. This little bit is really the only part of the flight that still bothers me every time. I need to figure out how to fall asleep at the start flights again. That used to work out pretty well. For some reason that ability now escapes me. That is probably related to the two shots of espresso that I just had. Strangely enough I just managed to fall asleep for a few minutes. Maybe it was sitting down and relaxing for just a second. Take off out of Chicago is a little bit bump today. Turbulence abounds here at the start of the flight.

Right now I’m rocking out to some Tears for Fears and getting ready to make a real push to write some prose. I happen to have in my pocket right now a piece of pumpkin bread. It was actually the last piece of pumpkin bread that they had at the Starbucks. I had wanted to get one of those front cabin seats today. Somehow during the course of getting on this flight I ended up assigned to this aisle seat toward the back of the flight. I’m glad to be on my way home and that is much better than sitting around at a the terminal all day. Chicago is fun and all, but I’m ready for a few days of not traveling. The terminal has popcorn which is pretty good. The regular popcorn is pretty darn good when it is freshly popped. They sell some mix of cheese and caramel popcorn, but I’m more interested in the regular old popcorn.

Maybe not picking a really good topic has slowed me down. Or maybe I’m just hungry and need a snack. At the moment the words are not flowing. The flight tracker says that 1 hour and 42 minutes are left on this flight. That should be enough time to knock out another 3,000 words or maybe even a few more if things go well. Getting to that level of productivity will probably require picking a topic and going with it for the rest of the flight. For some reason that is just not happening. I’m stuck in a weird place between writer’s block and productivity. Things are going and I’m writing here at a slow pace and most of that writing is about writing. Something will have to give here shortly. Yesterday I hammered out 10 topics that should have been at the center of my writing efforts. One of the problems with writing every day is that sometimes my focus can slip a little bit and I’m not interested in covering the topics that are on my list of things to cover.

This morning I did manage to setup and complete a live stream using the stream from the browser feature of YouTube Creator Studio in Chrome. Next time I’m thinking of just using my Pixel 2 XL smartphone instead. The camera is much better, but it does have to be propped up to run that way. I had thought maybe using the Chromebook would be the way to go, but the video quality was just not inspiring me to want to continue using that method. Maybe my preferences have just made 1080p HD video obsolete. Technology changes and our expectations of it keep getting higher and higher. I guess that is just an example of that happening in real time right now in the midst of this paragraph.

This seat is better than the last one in terms of cushioning. On the last flight I got justled around a little bit and felt bruised for a couple of days. Maybe that is just a sign of getting older or maybe this airline should invest in just a little bit better seats. This reminds me of why the last time around I upgraded my flights to a nicer seat. They are selling a ton of these inflight meals this go around. People seem to be really excited about sandwiches. They gave me a package of pretzel twists. They are kind of appealing at the moment. I must be super hungry. The airport in Denver normally has some pizza or at least something vegetarian. Traveling is really hard on my diet these days. I have been trying to eat mostly vegan and vegetarian as a fall back. That is hard enough, but when I’m on the go and hungry it gets easier and easier to order some french fries. That is a fall back position that brings me joy, but is not entirely the best option for me in the long term.

We are cruising along here in a stream of consciousness without any real topic just moving from paragraph to paragraph. That is one way to go about this whole writing thing. It is a type of offload and think about things sessions that happens sometimes. I’m hoping at some point the switch flips and my interests turn to dealing with the far depths of philosophy or at least toward a little bit of exploration about the life, the universe, and well everything. Sure that might not happen. We are already 1,500 words into the night and that is yet to happen. Maybe I just needed to clear my mind and get passed the first few pages of thoughts to get ready to write something meaningful. It is also possible that tonight is one of those nights where this whole blog post may be one epic and amusing false start. I’m sure something useful will show up here eventually.

The beverage cart is every so slowly coming this way. I have my 10 ounce Nalgene bottle filled with water, but at the moment all I can think about is getting some type of soda. Pretzel twists and soda are pretty much on the menu right now. I’m sure soon after that my one piece of pumpkin bread will be next. Those pretzel twists did not last very long. They are now gone and I’m done writing about them for the night. Tomorrow will probably be a day devoted to returning to my diet of Soylent. Ok —- that pumpkin bread did not last long either. My snacking for the flight is now complete. That should be enough to power me along the journey for the next hour and six minutes. We will see just how many words I can write in the next hour. The door is up to some really interesting possibilities.

Sometimes just having the door open and your sights set on finding a perfect possible future is not enough to make it happen. This is one of those times that my intentions are better than my actions. Earlier today a thought struck me about how imagination is a more powerful force than the rise and fall of waves in the ocean, but it is less consistent. Maybe that is where things needs to shift today. A little bit of consistency might just help push things along toward my goal of writing 1,000,000 words this year. Each day has to be devoted to writing an essay or a short story. My efforts to pen short stories have been a little bit questionable. It seems that I am super out of practice. It has not been like riding a bike. The number of false starts has been increasing. Maybe the reasons for that should be a lot more clear. They are not really all that clear. For the most part the key to good writing is finding the intersection of that spark of imagination and the motivating power of passion. A solid mix of imagination and passion can go a long way toward producing something meaningful.

Dr. Nels Lindahl
Chicago, Illinois
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs


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