Pete's Log: The Best of Both Fears
Entry #2624, (Life in General, Parenthood)(posted when I was 46 years old.)
I flew a lot as a kid, and as luck would have it, grew up in a time when kids were allowed access to the cockpit mid-flight to meet the pilots and look out the front windows. Flying was cool and fun and I don't remember it ever being scary. I even distinctly remember enjoying particularly bumpy flights on small planes between Denver and Gunnison.
Sometime around 2011, things changed. I don't remember any instigating event, I just remember I became anxious about flying. There was a stretch when Marc and I were flying from Munich to Düsseldorf every Monday morning and back every Friday evening. And I distinctly remember one flight during takeoff thinking I'd have to stop flying, it freaked me out so much. Yet I kept flying and after some time, the fear went away again. I still have no idea why it started or why it stopped.
These days anxiety finds other ways to manifest itself, and one of those is I have a hard time with any suspense or tension in TV shows or movies. Particularly in things I haven't seen before. So Jamie and I watch a lot of comedy.
Recently I started another rewatch of Star Trek: The Next Generation and was making quick progress through the episodes until I got to the end of Season 3. The cliffhanger finale The Best of Both Worlds is a classic—the episode where Picard gets turned into a Borg. Yet despite knowing how it turns out and despite a couple tries, I couldn't get myself to watch it.
Last night I finally forced my way through both parts of The Best of Both Worlds and it remains a classic. And the reward (besides getting to see the episodes themselves) was to get to see the episode Family, which is a different side of Star Trek and which had a stronger emotional impact on me than it has in the past. Must be this parenthood thing.
Anyway, times are weird. Hug your loved ones.