Whichever way the wind blows
Real life lessons from learning to fly
Covid has truly proven to be one of the most transformative forces the world has seen. It effectively turned upside down every aspect of one’s life for more than a year all at the same time. A sudden shock that forced everyone to adapt almost overnight. Could anyone have foreseen being separated from their significant others or working from for so long?
The pandemic struck through the entire social fabric affecting virtually everyone in some way be it couples, singles, students or the elderly. I am not the one to judge whether having to attend middle school remotely or not being able to see your grandkids is better or worse. Yet we have been fortunate enough that it is up to us to decide how we handle current situation. At the end of the day, a year of one’s life is too significant to let it fly by.
Breaking through the pandemic misery
It was not that long ago that I used to live in NYC with my roommates. Yet it is hard to comprehend that ever since June 2020 I have become nomadic and have moved places more than 6 times now. Crazy, isn’t it?
Back in May 2020, I was cruising slowly through pandemic living until my former roommate mentioned in passing that he considered moving out of NYC if it only wasn’t for his girlfriend having to be in the city. Although seemingly insignificant, these few words opened my eyes and changed my mindset entirely. Having gone through the classic Covid hobby pattern of learning to cook, catching up on old movies and games, my mind started to wonder what was next.
What would you do if you were not afraid?
One day I woke up with a long cultivated dream — what if it was the right moment to learn to fly? My mom’s job have always kept me fascinated by all things related to aviation. I still remember the old public observation point overlooking the Warsaw airport that she would take me to see my dad fly away on business trips to America. Or the moment when she took me to the B787 Dreamliner’s introduction to LOT Polish Airlines and I was able to sit in the cockpit.
Strangely enough, Covid-forced work-from-home made me realize that the opportunity cost of living outside NYC had never been greater. It was time to get creative. Crazy as usual, I signed up for a remote PPL course that was going to take place over 3 weekends in Warsaw meaning that I had to attend them overnight over Zoom.
All too real responsibility
Learning to fly brought me back to my primary school times in some way —I had never had to learn a new skill mentally and physically at the same time. Unsurprisingly, flying a plane requires a pilot to be extremely sharp on the job. It does not take much to realize that being even slightly hungover cripples your ability to simultaneously control the plane, ATC comms, and spatial orientation with other planes around. In fact, I never felt real responsibility in my life before I had to take off on my own.
Mastering the skill of getting off the ground had taken me a while yet I have been fascinated by the process. One can think of it as exploring a multidimensional space that I had never seen before. At first I tried to practice it all at once only to miserably fail. Getting used to controlling the aircraft proved to be too challenging to simultaneously improve spatial awareness and ATC communications. This is when I had to retreat to a more familiar technique: focus on one thing at a time or, in other words, optimize one variable while keeping the rest constant. It turned out that spending the next week visiting my flight school to passively listen to ongoing communications of other pilots was a game changer in my training process.
Stabilized approach to life
Pandemic has been a challenging time for me effectively uprooting my life. As an extroverted and single person, it has become virtually impossible to meet new people and much harder to spend time with friends. In order to adapt to the new reality, I decided to give up on the cornerstone of my stability — living in one place. Since June 2020, I have lived in 5 cities while being regularly on the move. Doing so came at a cost that I did not anticipate: one can only function well with one source of major uncertainty. Being more precise, it is impossible to function normally if one is also struggling with lack of stability be it at work or in a relationship. Imagine having to deal with constant moving around while handling an emotional crisis.
This realization led me to reducing number of stress factors in one’s life to focus on living since everything else is currently difficult. Drawing a parallel to flying again, one usually lands following a stabilized approach of maintaining fixed glidepath with constant airspeed and power. During the pandemic I am trying to keep everything constant while optimizing for continuous exploration while the opportunity cost is low. I refuse to keep everything constant.
