Wednesday, 9 October 2013

From the archives: Letting go.

This has always been a character flaw of mine. I can’t let certain things go. I still remember things from years ago that annoyed me or scared me or that I screwed up.

I do the same with flying. I concentrate on all the wrong things. Last lesson saw me acquire near half an hour of solo time, probably the best flying I’ve done on my own. So what do I remember from this flight? Do I focus on the 20 minutes of reasonable flying? Do I hell, all I can focus on is the one circuit that went wrong.
I should be thinking about the fact that although it went wrong, I shrugged it off enough to land the plane and carry on with the flight. I should be pleased with the fact that I recognised a bad-landing-in-the-making and executed a flawless go around without missing a heartbeat. I should be happy that I recognised the start of a potential wake turbulence incident and my immediate reaction was to go around. I didn’t even break a sweat. I should be happy with the fact that it was busy up there and I was doing just fine generally.

Instead I am still agonising over the “why aren’t you where you should be?” incident with ATC. I still can’t tell you exactly what went wrong. I know I must have screwed up somewhere but even my video doesn’t show me enough for me to figure it out. It’s eating away at me a little bit to be honest. I think I can accept the fact that I messed up, but I really need to know how.
I’m devoting far too much mental energy to this, I should be ecstatic about the stuff that did go right. I should be overjoyed that my reaction to Bob telling me he was going to get out was “Yep, alright. Off you go then.” Seriously I think this is the lowest my heart rate has ever been during a solo flight.

Instead I’m beating myself up over this one little blip, again and again and again.
Even though I’m still not sure what went wrong, I think I may have a strategy for coping If ATC and I ever disagree over where I should be going, but I need to run it past Bob first. That and I just need to LET GO!

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