Sunday, September 7, 2008

Shout out to my sky sista

I want to thank "Jen," who left this comment on my blog a couple posts back:
I just wanted to say how much I enjoy reading your blog. I had my first lesson in an R22 last month and was immediately hooked, but I share all your reservations and fears! It's so reassuring to read of someone else going through the same thing. Most flying blogs are very technical and miss out the whole emotional element of learning to fly. I've done 3.5 hours now, not sure how far I'll take it, but I'm sticking at it so far!
The delicious irony is that I've made a calculated effort to include interesting technical information to keep this blog from devolving into a self-absorbed personal drama bore-fest. Who knew!

As for you, Jen, I appreciate the reading and the comment. I have a few friends and family who very kindly keep up with my ramblings, but for the most part I often feel like I may as well be writing to a black hole. So thank you, you just made writing this blog worth it.

Keep up the flying, I'll be right here.

1 comment:

sundayrider said...

Hey!

Nice post ;-)

I like the technical info too, but it's the human experience I don't get from my copy of Wagtendonk. I also wouldn't complain if you spent more time celebrating your achievements. Show me what there is to look forward to!

Unfortunately my lesson at the weekend got cancelled because of bad weather, so I’m still on 3.5 hours. My plan at the moment is at least one lesson a week – fitting it in around work and the 2 hours it takes me to get to the aerodrome.

At the moment I love hovering. I’m slightly less keen on anything above about 20ft! Haha – they even wrote that on my file! When I get up there - if I’m not careful - my mind goes crazy conjuring up all sorts of unlikely scenarios. I know that I’m just sabotaging myself, trying to make myself freak out for some masochistic reason I can’t quite get a handle on yet. It’s just a bad habit. What I really want is to enjoy flying unreservedly - that's what I'm aiming for.

Funnily enough I realised that my fear of failure was stronger than my fear of flying. I so desperately want to live up to my own dreams. Hypnosis CDs help, as does lots of positive thinking and just trying to ignore myself when I whine and throw my toys out of the pram.

This whole thing is a massive learning experience, forcing me to confront a lot of things about myself :- the person I am, the person I want to be and how to get those two people to the same place.

I like to remind myself of the old Henry Ford quote - "Believe you can, believe you can't. Either way you're right."

I look forward to your next installment :-)

Jen