The cooling unit of my hotel room in Queens sounds like the traffic buzzing on a crowded New York street. It’s loud and obnoxious, but I drown it out, because I accept that the noise comes with the territory. A lot comes with this territory. A lot of extremes; extreme jet lag, extreme happiness, extreme loneliness, extreme uncertainty, extreme change.
Then. All is quiet again.
“Karalee- what’s up?” he questioned, in the way that only he could; inquisitively, optimistically and sincerely. “You seem like you are checking out.” I looked at Christian with slight surprise. Not because I thought he was wrong, but because my poker face of ‘happy all the time‘ hadn’t fooled him. Maybe, I hadn’t been fooling anyone. That’s the funny thing about being a fool- everyone knows it but the one who is playing foolish.
Seven years ago, I became a flight attendant because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and over the last two weeks, I have been forced to reexamine everything I had believed to be true about myself and my purpose in life. I thought that all of this life had brought me to the destination that was, “Writer. Blogger. Adventurer.” I don’t know if any of that is true anymore. Or maybe it’s absolutely true, I’m just struggling to believe. Because, it’s easy to believe in yourself when you are on-top-of-the-world, but much more difficult when the world lands hard on your shoulders.
And this has been my last few weeks; facing failures and fuck-ups. Not with flying though. With everything I care about outside of flying and everything that I am hoping to achieve and having in my world that is not defined by a flight attendant uniform. Flying is not anything out of the ordinary. It’s always the same mess of jet lag, exhaustion, beautiful places, red-eyes, good and bad crews…
The questions that have swirled in my head walk me down the path where the sign posts read, “Maybe I’ll never be more than I am right now. Maybe I should just walk away, give up, or stop working so hard. If I’m good, it wouldn’t be so difficult.” Then I think of you guys and how I’m ALWAYS preaching,
“Don’t quit your daydream. Don’t ever settle. You got this. It’s ok if you don’t get it right the first time. Become better. Work harder. Your dream will happen.”
I can’t tell you to live one way and then do the exact opposite. Because ultimately I know that the voices that tell me I am second-rate are these silly, stupid trolls that want to take over all the goodness ever intended for my life; for each one of our lives. We have to have the strength and determination to keep the volume of these tapes in check. Mute is always preferable.
We must keep going in the direction where we feel challenged, stretched and imperfect, because that will be where we discover the greatest reward. I constantly reiterate the quotes that, “If it’s easy, it won’t be worth it, and if it’s worth it, it won’t be easy, When I put that into play though, I find myself begging God, “Please, when will you ever let it be easy for me? When will I not have to feel like the worst writer on the team? When will I be the girl someone doesn’t just want to do, but someone wants to date? When will I know, ‘This is what I was always meant for?‘
Even after writing this post, I don’t even know if this is a blog that should go here or not. But, I always want this to be an honest and authentic space. Positive and hopeful, but realistic and true.
So this is my truth right now:
I’m really over the outfit choices I have been toting around with me for the last 12 days. It’s time to switch out my suitcase contents and go back to base.
Oh, and Christian- I’ll find my cadence, don’t worry. I hope this post is the beginning falling back into rhythm. I know we are always packing and unpacking suitcases, but oddly enough, I won’t go anywhere anytime soon. I’m sticking this out and not running from the challenging adventure of creating an inspired life. Although there are no guarantees, the forecast seems to look like…
it’s going to be worth it.
Absolutely worth it.
Kara, I absolutely love your blog. Thank you for being so genuine in your highs and lows that all us other FA’s can certainly relate to. Sometimes I feel like I wrote this! You are a beautiful person… Don’t stop writing and being yourself!! 🙂 ❤️