Up and Away Jr Birdmen

My brain is a 12 year old bully in the playground of my mind. It formulates the worst possible idea or thought at the most inappropriate time just to get a rise out of my sensible side. I have tried to talk nicely to it. I have tried to make it watch the Saturday afternoon kid’s anti-bullying programs on PBS…it just won’t listen. It’s like Fight Club without punching myself in the face.

I’ve learned to control this over the years. For the most part. When I have a board meeting approaching I have learned to shut the thoughts about the board turning against me into the board and I celebrating a great year at the annual meeting…in our underwear. Hey, when you have an active imagination that works against you, you have to give it something to chew on. Like throwing your dog a rawhide so he won’t eat the ottoman.

At any rate, when I was asked last year if I would be willing to come out to the National Marketing and Business Development Conference for the Credit Union National Association and present my credit union 101 speech, I was extremely honored. I said certainly and instantly felt recharged. What I was working so hard to accomplish in my little CU was being noticed on a National level. I had attended this conference back in 2008 in Nashville and I knew that it was THE conference of the year for CU marketers. Then I realized that the 2011 event was to be held in Las Vegas. I can’t drive to Las Vegas. I could not even rationally justify taking a train to Las Vegas. Even Megabus is not a viable option to travel from NE Ohio to Las Vegas. If I were to accept this great honor of getting to speak at the “big show” I would need to …..fly. I am irrationally scared of air travel.

Keep your statistics to yourself. I know that air travel is safer than driving by the numbers. I know that the 6 or so hours 32,000 feet up in a tin can to get from Cleveland to Las Vegas was my only option vs. the 35 or so hours in a car. I was in a tight spot. This was in December. My bully of a brain would have nearly 4 months to beat the snot out of the nice little college prep side of my brain. And boy did he ever. Over the course of time I lost countless hours of sleep. Wrote my will. Beefed up my life insurance. Hugged my kids at random times for no apparent reason at all. Woke my kids up in the middle of the night just to have the excuse to crawl in bed with them to get them back to sleep…all with the damn Alanis Morissette song in my head...

“Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly,He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye,He waited his whole damn life to take that flight,And as the plane crashed down he thought,"Well isn't this nice..." And isn't it ironic... don't you think…” 

In the 2 weeks prior to the trip had I not offered to my lovely wife to make this a much needed getaway for the 2 of us as well as a business trip, I would have come up with a random illness or emergency and cancelled. I figured it wouldn’t much matter to CUNA either way. If I got on a plane to fly out there I would certainly end up in the desert in a fiery ball of plane and people before ever plugging in my laptop to the projector, if I cancelled ahead of time at least they might have time to find an alternative speaker.

But I didn’t cancel. I couldn’t. My overactive sense of responsibility and my overpowering need to NOT disappoint my wife, who knew how desperately she and I both needed to escape with each other for a bit, would overthrow the bully and the terror that gripped my brain. And I am SO glad they did.

Our flights out here were certainly not what I would consider fun, but I managed to act like a brave little soldier and not rock back and forth chanting “we’re all gonna die” the whole time. I actually turned it into a game with my brain. Every time Alanis started singing I forced myself to do something that made it seem like I was enjoying the experience. After a few hundred times she quit singing. The flights were on time, the American Airlines folks were all very professional and friendly. It actually went well.

I am sitting now in a very nice room at The Cosmopolitan. My beautiful wife is sleeping. My presentations went VERY well on Thursday and Friday. I got to meet some fantastic CU leaders and got some great information to take back to my own shop. We went out last night and experienced the Blue Man Group and some fantastic food... Life is good.

I’ll write later about what I think of the Vegas experience…but the fear of flying thing…I think I have managed to stuff it down, out of the way for the moment. Until tomorrow afternoon at least, when it’s time to fly back….

Shut up Alanis...