Flying is Boring and That Is A Good Thing Sometimes
Instead of buying too-expensive Wifi, pick up your pencil, and let your brain do what it does best.
I started to write a post about how much I hate airports and airplanes and aviation in general, but it ended up being kind of a bummer. I was writing about how airports are all the same, and they’re all liminal spaces devoid of spirit and airplanes are just too-small overcrowded flying metal tubes, yadda yadda yadda, nothing we haven’t collectively felt altogether. The flying experience sucks, everybody knows that.
And yet, I find when I’m flying despite how much I complain that it saps me of creative energy, in practice, it does the opposite. Maybe its the down time. Maybe in fact it is simply being in an airport or an airplane, places really I hate being in, that lets me close my eyes and try to imagine being literally, anywhere else. Maybe it is the practice of being trapped in the middle seat, forced to stare to a grey folding tray at close range that makes my brain start to bubble. Maybe, this forced boredom is a good thing. So I pick up my pen, and I start drawing.
I like the sensory deprivation tube of the airplane. There is nothing to do except watch an old 2000’s comedy starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson, or Godzilla 3, or your mind slowly unravel before you. Another thing you can do is wait for your little snack and think about the chemical flavor profile of Oreos as their little lardy molecules roll around your tongue. Your secret third option is to make yourself busy either by science or magic. The secret to this is embracing your inner third grader, and start to doodle.
It took me a long time do draw like I did when I was eight. I just had to take a “think less, draw more” approach, except my thinking is always on overdrive, in which, I just draw faster. Drawing my brain movie to much easier to do on an airplane with nothing else to entertain myself with. It is like giving a child a stick and told to go play outside. Science, child development specialists, and me, all say sticks are better for children than Ipads. So for the sake of my own creativity, and sanity, I put mine away, and play with my pen-stick like the bored imagination intended. Boredom is food for your brain. Staring at the wall can be good for you. Letting your mind wander in all unexpected directions is a rollercoaster we forget we can ride whenever we want.
Being trapped on an airplane still isn’t a great experience by any stretch of the word great. It is still claustrophobic, boring, and if you forgot your sweater, cold. It does not invoke a great creative sense, or much sense at all. But that dosen’t mean you don’t have to have a good creative time. The guy next to me was stretching so much out of his chair that he positioned his ass squarely in my face, for far too long. I drew anyway, brushing off his airplane social faux pas with drawing my thoughts about where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart got his hair done, and where I could get mine done like that too. It is incredible that the human brain in all its miraculous science can turn a neuronic spark of electricity into a thought about hot sauce as “free tastebud removal”, or if people ever call Tom Cruise, Thomas. In between those zig zag musings, I still wonder if anyone actually knows Queen Elizabeth’s last name. I don’t. And I won’t look it up. I’m just going to ask around until someone tells me.
Drawing on the airplane is fun. It makes an otherwise mundane time palatable, and sometimes, enjoyable. Creativity can come to us most in our most boring moments, and that is by amazing design. Our brains so badly crave motion that when we aren’t being spoon fed entertainment, it creates it itself. I love drawing, I love creating, and I secretly love the boredom of the airplane because it allows me time to sit with the explicit implication that there will be nothing else to do. Good flight, bad flight, long flight, or short flight, up in the air is one of the last places we can be truly bored. I like taking off, taking out my notebook, and drawing regardless of how long it takes me to get where I’m going. While recycled air and being too close for comfort are the name of the game in modern aviation, I don’t have to have a bad time.
And even if I’m having a bad time, I can still do this:
