© Catherine Haslag

Pre-Flight

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I flew for the first time when I was 10.  I went with my grandma and uncle to California to visit my other uncle.  We flew TWA out of St. Louis.

I recently took my first plane trip in 2 years.  I flew to Las Cruces to visit some friends.  As I sat in Chicago for three hours waiting for my connecting flight, I started thinking about how air travel has changed since I took my first flight in 1990.

We used to stand in line at the airport to check in and get our boarding passes.  It was common to check a bag and you were allowed to check one for free.  Now, I check in from my cell phone.  It costs $30-$50 to check a bag, so I pack everyone I need in my carry-on.  If it’s not necessary for the trip, I don’t take it.  I have gotten really good at packing light.

Boarding passes were printed.  You had to be careful notto lose it.  I spent a lot of time checking my pockets to make sure I still had it.  They also doubled as a great bookmark for the trip.  Now, I pull my boarding pass up on my cell phone or watch.  No more checking pockets and no more handy bookmarks.

I don’t remember having any layovers when I was a kid.  It was a lot more common to get a direct flight from St. Louis to California or D.C.  Now, I always expect a layover.  I can’t tell you the last time I flew and didn’t have a layover in Chicago (ORD), Dallas (DFW), or Denver (DEN).  Oddly enough, I have never had a layover in Atlanta (ATL).

I remember my grandparents, uncles, cousin, and I all going to the airport together when I was a kid.  When my Uncle Dick flew in or out for a visit, we went and sat with him at the gate until he boarded his flight, or we met him right at the gate, searching the faces of the people walking up the gangway for his.  Now, those human moments of hugs and delight at seeing your loved one again happen at baggage claim or in the “kiss and fly” zone.  Unless you are a ticketed passenger, you aren’t getting past security.

There were meals and a snack on the planes.  Every flight.  I would get off a plane with a full belly.  As a kid, I was very concerned with what our flight would be serving.  Now, you are lucky to get a drink and a cookie.  Airlines don’t give nuts out on flights anymore because of allergies. The only meals I see served on planes are for international flights…and they aren’t as good as they used to be.

There used to be in-flight movies, usually a family-friendly film that was recently released but may or may not be in theaters at the time of the flight.  It was projected on a few screens scattered throughout the plane. Now, large planes offer each passenger their own mini entertainment center with movies and TV shows they can scroll through and choose from.  If your flight doesn’t offer you this option, most travelers have a phone or tablet they can watch downloaded movies and TV shows on to view in flight.

There have been changes in luggage styles, services offered in the airport, the way passengers dress and entertain themselves on flights.  Walkmans have been replaced by ear pods and iPhones.  Books and trashy magazines are still a standard. Hudson News is still a standard shop in many airports.

Security has changed too.  You still run your bags through a scanner, but now you have to take off all jackets, shoes, and items that aren’t the layer above your bra and panties.  Body scans are standard practice, often followed with a pat-down that in other situations would qualify as sexual assault.  I have literally had a woman with TSA put her hands in my pants.  When I went through security for my first flight, my 10-year-old self didn’t have to strip first and no one touched me inappropriately.

Another sign of the times and how much things have changed.  Something common and mostly insignificant that reveals so much more about what our world was and is becoming.

©2023 Catherine Haslag, All Rights Reserved.

Attention

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Everyone wants your attention.

The junk mail.

The spam texts.

The telemarketers.

The jingles on the radio.

The commercials on TV.

The ads on social media.

The Billboards along the roadside.

The videos blaring at the gas stations.

The sponsored content in online news.

Each one stealing a little from you,

Until you have nothing left to give.

© Catherine Haslag

Prime

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Me on my birthday in City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico.

Primetime, prime numbers, Amazon Prime, prime meridian, prime rib, Prime Directive, primadonna, primeval, Optimus Prime, primordial, prime cut, prima ballerina, prime of your life.

Prime can be used as an adjective or a noun. As an adjective, it means of first importance, main, of the best possible quality, excellent. As a noun, it is a state or time of greatest strength, vigor, or success in a person’s life. The word originates from Old English prim and from Latin prima.

Needless to say, I have been thinking about prime lately.

There are a total of 25 prime numbers between 1 and 100 – 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97.

Me on my birthday in City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico.

I had no idea until I made this list that I had already celebrated 12 prime years of my life. If I live to 100, I will celebrate 12 more. This puts me squarely in mid-life.

I just celebrated prime birthday number 13, a prime number itself. This prime birthday by extension makes this a prime year for me. This is how I am framing this next trip around the sun for me – a prime year.

A prime year to learn, to grow, the develop relationships with those I love, to get stronger, to explore, to read more, and to continue enjoying this thing we call life.

I am truly in my prime.

I look forward to where this prime year will lead me.

 

Thanks to Fred Bogott for pointing out that 41 is a prime number.  You inspired this post and my outlook on this coming year.

© Catherine Haslag

One Year

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One year ago this month, I posted my first blog. I created this space to help me develop my voice and become a better writer. Over the course of the past year, I have learned a lot about myself, how I want to live my life, what I want to say with my voice, and how I want to say it. I will let you debate on the improvement of my writing skills.

Biking the Root River Trail, Summer 2021

The blogs I have shared here have come to me while riding my bike, driving to Missouri to visit my family, and tearfully at 3 am when I couldn’t sleep. I have writing ideas jotted in my various journals, in my notes app on my phone, and on my computer. Some of these ideas will become blogs posted here. Others will never get beyond those few jotted notes.

I have also drafted a few pieces that will not be shared on this blog or anywhere else. They are still too raw and do not communicate a message that I think is worth sharing with the general public. While I have a first amendment right to freedom of speech, that doesn’t mean that all of my speech needs to be shared. I strongly believe in freedom of speech, but I also feel we have the responsibility to self-censure when that speech won’t contribute to creating a productive discourse or a more perfect union.

I have learned so much over the past year while writing for this blog. I learned that I am not good at writing book reviews. While I love to read books, writing reviews is not my jam. It puts too much pressure on me and takes away some of the pleasure I get from reading.

I learned that a good piece doesn’t have to be long. One of my favorite poems is only 4 words long.

I have learned that some ideas/thoughts are not things I want to spend my time writing about, so I let them go back into the invisible universe of ideas. Someone else can use their time to explore it.

I learned that stillness, reflection, and time are key to developing a good blog post. I don’t have to shoot for the moon. The simplest of ideas tend to lend themselves to better writing. (I assume that if you are reading this that you think my blogs are at least marginally good. If you disagree that my blogs are any good, then I wonder why you are reading this and not something else.)

I learned blogging provides space for me to examine, process, and rethink my life, values, ideas, the world around me. I learned that facts are guideposts for me to locate truth, which is incredibly valuable to me. I learned that I have a hard time relating to people who don’t value facts as I do.

This space has also allowed me to take a trip down memory lane. The nostalgia has been a welcome respite during the pandemic. It has also helped me to appreciate some things in my life I had never given deep thought to previously.

I have also learned that I want to keep doing this work. Even if no one else ever reads this, I find value in writing it…and that’s all that really matters to me.

As I state on the front page of this blog, “…this blog is for my growth and learning…” I still don’t know where this work is leading me, but I am enjoying the journey.

I look forward to seeing where it takes me over the next year.

 

A Very Special Thanks…

Thanks to all of you who have read and continue to read my blogs and sent me feedback over the past year. I really appreciate your time and insights.

I want to give a big thanks to Sue Grove, who has proofed some of my blogs and helped me learn how to write using active voice. I am by no means perfect in this, but I am improving with every sentence I write.

Thank you also to my wonderful partner, Jason, who manages all the website details so I can just think, write, and post. Thank you for being a cheerleader for my vision. I love you.

©2023 Catherine Haslag, All Rights Reserved.

Fall Back

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It happened again this November 7. In the wee hours of the morning, the clocks rolled back an hour.

Daylight savings time ended.

This time of year is hard for me. The daylight is already dwindling as the northern hemisphere tilts further from the sun. I live in southern Minnesota. The summer solstice provides us with 15 hours 30 minutes and 9 seconds of daylight. The winter solstice brings a measly 8 hours 59 minutes and 2 seconds of daylight, a 42% decrease. I am writing this on November 7 where we have 10 hours 1 minute and 50 seconds of daylight. Tomorrow, we will have 1 minute 19 seconds less daylight.

The shorter days are hard on me. I try to get more exercise, take vitamin D daily, and spend time outside whenever possible to help combat the shorter amount of daylight. The gut punch each fall comes when we “fall back” by setting our clocks back one hour. There is something about that shift of daylight from being in the evening hours to the morning hours that just knocks it out of me. For me, the extra hour of sleep isn’t worth it. I feel like I spend so much of my time in the dark because the sun sets before 5p now (4:56pm to be precise). The darkness makes is feel so late so early in the evening. I could crawl into bed at 8pm this time of year…and sometimes I do.

So I hunker down, drink more hot tea, find some good books to read, take double the vitamin D, make some hot soup, and wait for March 13, 2022 when we will spring forward and have daylight in the evening again.

References

Sunrise Sunset, (2014-2021). Sunrise Sunset Times in Austin, MN. https://sunrise-sunset.org/

(Yes, I looked up all of those hours of daylight and sunsets.)

One Month

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Created using Canva.

I turned 40 last year and have started thinking more about how I spend my time, my life. The first 40 years went incredibly fast. I can only imagine how quickly my remaining years will go. I want to have a meaningful impact on the world and participate in activities that are satisfying. This desire is slowly making me more aware of how I spend my time and consider how I want to spend my time.

The other night, I was watching videos on YouTube before bed.

In one of the videos, a woman said that if you watch just 2-hours of YouTube videos each day, that over the course of a year, you will spend one month watching YouTube.

This didn’t seem possible, so I did the math:

2 hours x 365 days = 730 hours

730 hours/24 hours = 30.417 days

She was absolutely correct.

It is amazing how something so seemingly small can build into a large amount of time.

This made me think – is there really that much on YouTube worth watching that I would give up a month of my life each year for it? While there is good content on YouTube, is everything I watch worth my time? Do I really find satisfaction from this activity?

This idea can be applied to anything we spend a fair amount of time doing each day.

Do I find (Insert activity here) so satisfying that I want to spend one month of the year doing it?

This activity could be anything. Playing a video game, listening to music, running, watching TV, or scrolling through social media.

I jumped onto Screen Time on my iphone and ipad to see what I had been doing with my time. Here is what I found:

15.75 hours on YouTube

19 hours playing games (granted, a good chunk of this was walking while Pokemon Go was open in my pocket, tracking my steps, but 10.5 hours this time was spent playing Two Dots).

4.25 hours on social media

I had no idea how my screen time had added up. It impacted my ability to focus, be still, and participate in activities that matter to me, like reading, cycling, and spending time with my partner. I had spent nearly 40 hours the previous week participating in activities that The Eisenhower Matrix classifies as Not Urgent and Not Important.

This did not sit well with me.

The Eisenhower Matrix. This graphic taken from https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/eisenhower-matrix. Be sure to check out this article to learn more about the Eisenhower Matrix.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not one of these people that feels I have to spend every minute of every day doing something productive. I understand the need for rest, hobbies, and space in the day and have worked to incorporate these activities into my life. Recreation is a very good thing; however, I wondered if this is the recreation I need? This self-analysis is about being intentional in the use of my time and not about labeling anything as “good” or “bad.” There is nothing inherently bad with watching YouTube videos, using social media, or playing video games. I just don’t want to do them mindlessly or overuse it.

I decided to track what I watch on YouTube and generally how much time in general on screens and what activities I do during that time for a week. I didn’t include work-related activities, just those done outside of my work responsibilities. I also decided that I would spend all my recreational screen time on my phone and tablet since I can track my time/usage easier on those devices.

Just being aware of how much time I spent watching videos on YouTube, scrolling through Facebook, or playing games changed my habits. By the end of week 5, my use of YouTube dropped by nearly half and I had removed two games from my devices, dropping my time spent gaming by 84%. I just didn’t find it as fulfilling anymore. My social media use stayed roughly the same the whole time. My screen time spent on social media, games, and YouTube dropped in total by half.

I also started paying attention to what I watched on YouTube and why I was watching it. Was I looking for creative ideas, entertainment, education, or simply a cute dog/cat video to lift my mood.

The time I found by changing my habits allowed me to write more blogs (like this one), binge an entire audiobook in a weekend (I highly recommend Lincoln in the Bardo. SUCH a good book!), and spend more time with the people I love.

I am not done with this experiment yet. I plan to keep going with this awareness and see where it takes me. I don’t want to stare at a screen to become a mindless habit.

I feel I have taken a good step forward on this intention.