From the Editor’s Desk: Crash (Premium)

In early 1987, I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to go back to college after wasting a year in art school, the first of two times I’d try to course correct from that mistake. My father lived there with my three sisters and Sharon, the woman whose home my wife and I would later buy here in Pennsylvania. He had an extra bedroom, offered to pay for my education, and I was in love with the American Southwest at the time, so it seemed like a no-brainer.

I have many memories from that year. Among them are a house fire right after that Christmas limited my time in New Mexico, and I had met my future wife just months before I left, complicating matters. But I was reminded recently of an episode in which I went out to go jogging in our neighborhood and I experienced a scary moment in which my vision started contracting from the sides into blackness, despite the brightness of the day. Albuquerque is at a high altitude, higher than Denver, and I had perhaps pushed it too hard. And as my vision disappeared, I stopped moving, crouched down, and shielded by eyes with my hands. It was terrifying, of course. But it was also temporary, thankfully. I hobbled back to the house, and I never jogged in Albuquerque again.

I always think about this moment when I get overwhelmed. It was a visceral, physical embodiment of what it feels like to just shut down when there’s too much happening at once and my brain can’t keep up. There are minor versions of this that I sometimes experience with things like software coding, where I feel like my brain has reached some limit and I just have to walk away from it. And then there are more profound versions, as you might experience with a personal tragedy. My son almost dying as a baby, me holding his lifeless body in my arms as a doctor sticks him with needles and gets no reaction, is perhaps the most obvious example.

But pain and tragedy are a spectrum, and life has a way of constantly probing to see what one can endure. It’s an indignity, something we all deal with occasionally, passing the interim periods by either forgetting–my go-to coping mechanism–or counting down to the next problem. There are professional versions of this, like YouTube blocking me and everyone else from getting into my own channel back in January, or PayPal suddenly refusing to accept payments on my behalf, both times without a single warning. And there are personal versions, things that seem to amplify and become more common as we get older. It never ends.

I don’t know how other people cope with life’s roadblocks, but based on a lifetime of experience, I’m sure some handle these things better than others. The one thing I do know is that everyone has a limit, a breaking point. You run into a wall eventually, are so overwhelmed that you almost shut down completely. This was my experience during and after my trip to Seattle last week, and I’m still trying to figure out why it was so bad.

I have ideas. And I have a sneaking suspicion that a perfect storm of unrelated events compounded to make the collective experience worse. That is, if any of these things had just happened in isolation, it would have been fine. If just a few of these things happened, I would have ridden it out. Maybe all of these things could happen, but in some different order, or spaced apart just a bit more. I don’t know. I’ll never know.

On the Thursday before my Sunday, Mark and one of his roommates drove down from Rochester to spend a few days with us. They were here so we could get Mark’s car’s title signed over and notarized, something that could only happen here in Pennsylvania. But we also gave Mark our two bikes, and the garage bike rack we stored them on, because we never used them and Mark would. (And since has, to our delight.) But those few days turned into something else entirely. As I wrote in From the Editor’s Desk: This is What Matters Most (Premium), Mark and I learned that Ali, a minor but important character in our lives here in Pennsylvania had passed away, triggering an emotional rollercoaster that continues to do this day. It was bad, but also good, in the sense that I had at least communicated to this person, more than once, how much he mattered to us. We often don’t get that opportunity.

Mark and his roommate left last Saturday, my wife and I spent that day working, and we went out to eat at the bar/restaurant we’ve frequented since we moved to that apartment in Macungie in early 2023. We have so many friends there, and the place had closed for several months, triggering all kinds of problems, but then reopened recently under new owners, and it’s been like an ongoing reunion ever since. We ate there last night, in fact. But the place being taken away from us was like an amputation, a horrible thing that was more troubling than I can even explain. Having it come back, and having almost the entire cast from before–the people who work there as well as our fellow customers–has been almost euphoric, perfect. In short, another rollercoaster.

Sunday morning, I woke up at 4 am and Stephanie drove me to the local airport in Allentown before driving off to Boston to see her family and friends there after a four-plus month absence because of our recent time in Mexico. I normally do things in very particular ways, and with flying, I’m all about reducing the problems via packing lightly, always carrying my bags, and flying direct as much as possible. But for the Seattle trip, I went against that latter preference so I could avoid the 90-minute drive to and from Newark, which, let’s face it, has been #$%^show this year. And so I would fly to and from Seattle through O’Hare in Chicago, one of the biggest airports in the U.S., and with the tightest imaginable connections.

This was a mistake. It stressed me out before and during this connection on the way to Seattle and, as I’ll get to eventually, before, during, and afterward on the way home. I had a 19-minute window to make my way between terminals in O’Hare on the way to Seattle, what feels like a miles-long trek that literally includes going underground to walk beneath an area in which planes taxi. And I made it in just 11 minutes. So that was fine, and the 4 or 4.5 hours I had in the air after that was plenty of time to calm down. And get some work done.

Before the pandemic, I traveled for work a lot and while I never had any real sense of balance, I got good at it. Since the pandemic, I engage in far less work-related travel, especially via plane. And since we purchased an apartment in Mexico–what was it? three years ago?–I fly mostly to that destination, which means we go through Newark, which is not ideal, but with a direct flight, which is. This also means that I don’t stay in hotels all that much anymore. I used to fly to Colorado so much that many of the employees in the Fort Collins Marriott knew me by name. These are different times.

In any event, the one thing that remains consistent with the past is that work travel is, and was, its own form of reunion. I see people who do what I do, usually lots of them, and there is some spectrum of friends and acquaintances there, with shared experiences and histories. Seattle is problematic, though, in that I have many friends there, many of whom worked, or once worked, at Microsoft. I have always struggled to make time for people there, given my schedule with whatever event, and I always leave and am pinged by someone I didn’t reach out to who is confused or hurt that I visited and never saw them.

Before this trip, and before the episode with the person who had passed away, I resolved to do better this time. And so I made a list of the people I wanted to see, some local, some I hadn’t seen in person for a while, and some from as far away as England and Australia. And then I reached out to each in turn ahead of the trip. Made plans, vaguely, and then more exactly, as the trip got closer. And then pinged each as needed once I got to Seattle. And I am happy–no, delighted–to report that by the time the trip ended, I had run the rack. I saw all of them, spent time with all of them. That, at least, was wonderful.

But the Seattle trip, for Build 2025, was negative overall. I told that story in a lengthy stream of consciousness over two parts in Fear and Loathing in Seattle (Premium) and More Fear and Loathing in Seattle (Premium), so I won’t rehash that here. Other than to point out the many cascading realities that started adding up as the week went on.

There were at least two nights on this trip when I only had four or fewer hours of sleep; actually, there were three, counting the night before I flew home. Build has long been my favorite Microsoft event–as was its predecessor, PDC, before that–but the ebb and flow of the topics that interest me most, like Windows, has long been a complicating factor too. There were the protests, of course, some of which everyone knows about, many only a few know about, and a few I experienced personally, not truly scary or dangerous, but weird, off. There were the layoffs before the show, escalating the process of removing the number of people I know at Microsoft, and, in the case, leading to a sad mass depression and resignation for those still remaining. Very few of the people I normally see at these events even came to the show. And so on.

These things, combined, perhaps led to what should have been a predictable outcome. The times I did get together with friends were almost euphoric. I mean, they always are. You overdo it a bit, perhaps, because you’re happy to see them. But it was amplified this time. Thank God that Seattle is such a sleepy town, the area around the convention centers and hotels basically shut down each night a 9 pm, limiting the possibilities for stupidity. Granted, we always found a way. This is what happens.

One of the mornings there, I woke up at 8:30 am, and this was, perhaps, my first indication that something was wrong. I need to put that in perspective. I normally get up between 6 and 6:30 am, sometimes as late as 7. But I live on the East Coast, and Seattle is three hours earlier. So I will normally get up even earlier on these trips, and I did, in fact, get up at 4:00 am there the first morning. But 8:30 am in Seattle is 11:30 am my time, and … No. Just, no. That is not even on the radar as a wake-up time. But it happened, and it was confusing, and more than a bit troubling. It was all starting to add up.

The night before I flew home, I had dinner with Stephen Rose, one of the most thoughtful and accommodating people I know. (Rafael is very much like that, too. We had had dinner a few nights earlier, and he was nice enough to reserve a table for four, just in case anyone else wanted to show up, he knows what these events are like, for me, and for anyone else. But I showed up alone, deliberately, so I could focus on him. It was the right thing to do, and perhaps overdue.) I had brought Stephen a gift from Mexico City–he had visited us there back in March and didn’t have an opportunity to get to a particular spot he wanted to check out–and Stephen being Stephen, he had brought me a gift as well, which was completely unnecessary but thoughtful and unexpected.

When we finished up, we walked back to the hotel, and he got his car from the valet. I again had to wake up at 4 am for the flights home, and an even tighter connection in Chicago. And I knew that the day after I got home, I’d be driving up to the Finger Lakes with my wife, sister, and brother-in-law. I always need more time, always. And I was getting stressed about that, but also happy that I had pretty much seen everyone I had wanted to, minus one person who had been super-busy all week. We had just kept missing each other. Stephen got in his car and drove away. I turned around and was about to walk through the front door of the hotel, where I would at least get 5 hours of sleep. And then my phone buzzed.

It was Kyle, the one person I hadn’t seen.

“We are in the fountain bar,” the text read.

Hm. Why was that name so familiar? I was going to look it up on Google Maps, but then I saw a sign on the window of the hotel. For the Fountain Bar. Which was in the hotel I was staying at. So instead of texting him back, I walked inside, turned left, walked perhaps 50 feet, and walked into the bar. Where I met Kyle and some coworker friends. We hung out for over an hour. I had, as I had pointed out earlier, run the rack. It was beautiful.

I also ran into some folks from Microsoft I knew from their involvement with Build or whatever but had never met. So even when I meant to go back to my room, I found myself delayed. I was so tired I was swaying in front of them, and I found myself apologizing repeatedly. I’m sure they thought I was drunk. I guess I was, sort of, but only from exhaustion. I don’t even want to think about how little I slept that night. But it was bad. Really bad.

4 am arrived in what felt to be about 5 minutes later. And I was off to the airport. Where I arrived curiously early, despite Sea-Tac’s curiously terrible security lines, and unwound a bit in the United lounge. Where I realized while recording First Ring Daily that I had left my jacket at security somehow. I went to try and get it back after that, but was told I’d have to exit security, and there was no time. I kissed the jacket goodbye, waited in line for my flight, still swaying, and headed off to Chicago.

Except, of course, I didn’t. Life had once again conspired against me in my time of need. The plane sat there and didn’t take off. Technicians came on board and began looking at some electronics, something tied to the screens in front of each seat. Eventually, we were told that the delay was tied to a nonfunctioning entertainment system, something that wasn’t required to fly. And all I could think was that this plane had been sitting at the gate for over an hour before we boarded, which I knew from United’s notifications. And why hadn’t anyone figured this out before now?

No matter. We left 30 minutes late. I had a connection of less than 30 minutes in Chicago. The United app told me that it was a 22-minute walk from Gate B23, where I landed, to Gate F30, where my next flight would be leaving from. And I would have to really hoof it this time, even more than on the flight there. I compulsively kept checking the app to see if anything changed, there were mentions of good tailwinds and whatever. But it never really changed. It was going to be very, very close. Too close.

My experiences flying through Chicago are universally negative. No matter the airline, we seem to land what feels like miles from the terminals and then taxi for what feels like forever. I almost always joke, to people I travel with or complete strangers nearby, it doesn’t matter–that we drive half the way to Chicago. This is another coping mechanism, of course. But it doesn’t help.

In this case, we landed and started taxiing. And then we stopped. Full-on stopped. And sat there. The minutes ticked by.

Seeing me looking again and again at my phone, a flight attendant facing backward in his seat asked me when my flight was leaving; there were all kinds of people on this flight with connections, and a lot of them were going to miss them. I told him the time and when the boarding gate would close, and he said, “You won’t make it.” I told him I had to try.

“Look out the window,” he said to me. I did.

“Do you see a plane hangar with American Airlines logos on it?” he asked. I did.

“You’re not going to make it, then,” he concluded, telling me that these flights always stopped right here when taxiing. For 20 minutes.

20 minutes?? I recalculated the time-based math I always perform while traveling. I would get there after they closed the gate but before the plane would leave. Surely, they would let me onboard. I asked if there was a way to communicate with the airline or that flight in particular. And was told this was impossible. There was nothing I could do.

Well, there was one thing I could do. I could run, or as close to that as I could get with my bags in tow. You know, assuming we ever got to the gate in the first place. The woman next to me was heading to Scranton, Pennsylvania with a similar time constraint. “How fast can you run?” I asked. Time passed.

I can’t tell you the last time I ran that quickly through an airport, but when the plane finally pulled up to the gate, I went for it. And I ran up to the gate for the departing flight, I could see that the area was quiet. But I could also see that the plane was there. And its door was still open. Disheveled, sweating, and heaving, I asked the gate agent if I could please get on the plane.

“They already closed the door,” she said, not looking up.

I looked at the plane again. The door was open. Which I told her.

She didn’t do anything, didn’t even look up. She kept looking at the screen she had been fixated on since before I had arrived.

“Could you … I don’t know, call them? Maybe walk down there?”

She picked up a phone. She stood there silently. A minute passed. More. I will leave my blood pressure your imagination. All I know is that I had done a 22-minute walk in what felt like half that time or less. And I had made it.

I had not made it.

“Sorry, they released the brake,” she finally said.

Look, I’m only human. I’m not defending what came out of my mouth next. I’m just reporting it.

“Did that happen after I arrived here and asked you to do something, or after you got on the phone and did nothing?” I asked. Rhetorically. It didn’t matter.

This didn’t phase her.

“I can put you on the next flight,” she said. This, I knew about. My flight would get in around 5 pm, and my wife and I planned to go out to dinner after she had picked up me at the airport in Allentown. The next flight, the only other flight, would leave after that and would get in between 10 and 11 pm.

“Um, OK.”

“But you’ll be on standby,” she finally added.

This was going from bad to worse. If I missed that flight, and it felt like I would, I would have to fly the next day. I’d get home after we were supposed to leave for upstate New York.

I asked her if I could fly somewhere else. Newark, perhaps. Philadelphia?

She started typing. I was thinking about maybe flying to Syracuse or even Rochester, if that was somehow possible, and that my son could get me and drive me to the Finger Lakes. These are the types of options I’d consider if I were making this change. I started to ask her something to the effect of, “if there are any upgrades on this flight, economy plus, or …”

She handed me a piece of paper. It was a ticket. I was in a middle seat in economy. On a flight to Newark. “I … um…”

“You got the last open seat,” she said, as if I had won an award. And that was that.

Well, that was not that: I then had to walk, defeated, back the way I had come, through the entirety of the F concourse–the gate I would have left from was literally at its far end–through the underground passage between terminals, back to the B concourse, and to a gate just a few down from where I had arrived. With a quick stop at the United lounge I saw on the way to clean up a bit. I was a mess.

I called Stephanie to tell her about the change. I would land in Newark, 90 minutes away, and not in Allentown, the next town over, and over two hours later than before. Add in the drive time, and I didn’t even want to think about it. And …

“Can you just get an Uber?” she asked me. She had driven home from Boston that day, a five-hour drive. She was–and this was hilarious to me at the time, not in a good way–a bit tired.

I could feel the blackness coming in from the sides again. It was Albuquerque all over again. She had surprised me into silence. Honestly, it was a reasonable request. I wasn’t thinking clearly.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” she said after many second of silence. I hadn’t said anything.

Now I felt bad. It’s fine, I said. Of course I can. And then she felt bad, apologized, and insisted on picking me up. So we argued about that. Perfect.

Without belaboring the rest of this terrible day, suffice to say that I sat in a middle seat in economy on a plane to Newark between two guys who I apologized to in advance, and it was fine. My wife picked me up after sending me a screenshot of the flight I was on after I refused to tell her which flight it was, telling me she’d be in Newark whether I wanted that or not. And we drove home. After unloading on her about all that had happened, I researched if anything was still open so we could have a very late dinner. But the Lehigh Valley, like Seattle, is still a small-town place, and the one restaurant that Google told us was open was not open when we arrived in the pouring rain. I corrected that in Google Maps after we stopped at a McDonald’s, and my phone beeped later in the drive to tell me my edit had already been accepted. For the love of God. We walked through the front door after 11 pm. Right on schedule.

Last weekend was a blur. I got up and worked on Friday morning. We met my sister and brother-in-law at 3 pm and drove up to the Finger Lakes, a long weekend trip we always take together each Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend. It would rain all weekend, literally until sunset the night before we went home, and there would be no campfires and no walking around the cute small towns we go to. We visit this area for the fantastic wineries, and we somehow collectively managed to do much less than we usually do. Maybe they could sense the vibe.

On Saturday, my body finally gave up on. I should have seen this coming, but I was on autopilot.

We had visited three wineries and were heading back to the rental house we always stay at. I was nodding off and getting shook awake whenever my brother-in-law turned the car and my head bounced off the window. He suddenly announced that he had remembered a place Steph and I had never visited, that him and my sister hadn’t been to in years. And I just fell asleep. I was awake, sort of, and then I was not. They left me in the car and I slept the entire time they were in there, maybe 45 minutes. I had never done anything like that in my life. I can barely sleep in a bed at night.

When we got back, I slept a few more hours. And then went to bed right after dinner. It was like I was sleeping off the past week. All the terribleness, all the mounting, never-ending back-to-back terribleness. I’m still not quite sorted out inside, and it’s now almost two weeks to the day when I found out about Ali, the local guy who had passed away. I will never catch up on all the Google I/O news from last week, and I’ve only barely started working through the Build sessions videos I’d downloaded. The PayPal thing happened. It’s … overwhelming.

People often ask me why I don’t take time off. I explain that writing isn’t like coal mining and that it’s rewarding, and that the accomplishment of getting something done each day, even if it’s small, is meaningful to me. I’ve been doing this for years. It’s always worked. But I feel like the weirdness of the past week or two piled on in ways I’m just not OK with. That this was different, and terrible. Shaking it off is going to take time. It’s already taken longer than I’d like. I am still so tired.

And there’s still more. I have a doctor’s appointment today, and more to tell about that story. At least in this case, it’s mostly good news. But there’s always more. That’s life. All I can do is try to deal with it and keep moving forward. But all I want to do is sleep.