I’m going flying again…
July 21, 2023, 8:07 PM
Remember when I wrote that Journal entry about how I had not flown on an airplane in more than two decades? That non-flying streak ends next week. Elyse and I are taking a Wednesday-to-Friday “weekend” trip to Toronto in order to see an exhibit at the Myseum of Toronto about television in Toronto. As you probably guessed, there are elements from Today’s Special involved in this exhibit. The exhibit runs through the middle of next month, and so I figure, we’ve got to go see it. I found out about the Myseum exhibit from Nina Keogh (who played Muffy), and it opened just after we had finished our trip to Ottawa. I really wanted to go to the exhibit, but I felt like I couldn’t do another trip to Canada so soon after the last one, both for cost reasons, but also for time reasons. But eventually, I determined that I couldn’t resist, but that the only way that the trip would make sense would be if we flew. I played with it in my head, and then pitched it to Elyse, and she was supportive of the trip, but was surprised that I suggested flying. But an exhibit about Today’s Special will mean a lot to me, so I considered it worth it. I loved the children’s television exhibit when we went to Ottawa, and so I’m excited to see this second take on a similar subject. If it tells you anything, I heard Muffy’s voice in my head, telling me, “I know you want to visit me, but to do it, you’ll have to fly, you see.” Damn it, Muffy, you talked me into it.
Once we get to Toronto, we’re staying at the Chelsea again, which is within walking distance of the Myseum and also “The Store“. My plan for the day is to visit the Myseum and the store, and see what else I can get myself into in that general area. It all works out because the Chelsea is about four blocks from the store, and then the store is about four blocks from the Myseum.
I suppose that this trip is the logical conclusion of a process that had led me to do a lot of thinking. For about seven months, from early November to early June, I was working various services that took me past Washington National Airport several times a day. I would roll up and see all of these people boarding with their little suitcases and going wherever. I also saw the planes take off and land as I went by. This happened day in and day out. And it got me thinking. It made my flightless life feel quite confining, as I saw people traveling the world, and I was under a self-imposed limitation based on how far it would be practical to travel via road or rail. I did a whole lot of regional travel, but I started to feel a little constrained, as there were things that I wanted to do but were either unreachable by car or impractical to do with the time that I had available.
Continue reading…Categories: Airplanes, Today's Special, Travel
Twenty years out of college…
July 12, 2023, 12:20 PM
This year marks twenty years since I graduated from college, and in seeing all of the people posting stuff about college graduations and such on Facebook these last few months, it’s made me realize that I have a lot to say about my college experience. It’s one of those things where I wish that I had known then what I do now, and it makes me wonder how things might have gone if I had reached the same present as today, but knowing what I know now.
It’s worth noting that with the passage of time, I have come to view my college years in an increasingly negative light. In the moment, as documented in my College Life website, which now serves as an archive of what was once a section of the main website, I was having a pretty good time and enjoying life – or at least that’s the public face that I tried to put on about it. The truth is that I never felt a sense of belonging there, my performance caused me to develop a major inferiority complex while there, and I coped with the stress of the environment in unhealthy ways. I believe that the root cause of all of my difficulties was a then-undiagnosed case of autism. However, high-functioning cases of autism like I have still weren’t really looked for and diagnosed like they are today. I was not formally diagnosed diagnosed with autism until 2022 at the age of 41, when I finally decided to put the question to rest.
First, though, when it came to my deciding whether or not to go to college, that was never really a decision. My parents had determined, practically from conception, that I would go to college, and that was that. When it’s been drilled into your head that you were going to college like it was a commandment from on high or something for your entire life, that’s just what you did, largely from not knowing any better, and that you would then get a “college job” after getting that degree. So growing up, any thoughts that I might have interest in fields that didn’t require a college education were more or less, quashed and any exploration of those fields was discouraged because that conflicted with my parents’ plan to send me to college. It was also strongly implied that any path that did not lead to a college degree was a failure, because it didn’t live up to my parents’ expectations for me. It caused me to think that the people who went down the vocational track in school were failures, because they couldn’t get into college. I understand that my parents wanted what they thought was best for me, and they considered a college education to be that thing, but the mindset that they inadvertently instilled was quite toxic, and it took many years to unlearn. I suppose that was something of a failure on their part, because with my now being the same age as they were when they were raising me, they almost definitely knew better about jobs that didn’t require a college degree, but that’s not what they instilled in me, intentionally or not.
Smoke blankets the city…
July 4, 2023, 10:02 PM
Funny how things work out. The smoke from Canadian wildfires that blanketed the eastern US in a thick layer of haze in early June was not a good thing to have happen for any number of reasons, but putting on my photographer hat for a moment, I was kind of kicking myself for not getting out in it and photographing the haze like I meant it. All I got were a few phone shots taken from the car, going southbound on I-95 while heading home after taking Elyse to Ramblewood, a campground up in Darlington, on June 8 for an event:
The view at the northern interchange between I-95 and the Baltimore Beltway.